
Glass , 
Book„ 



-^ — ^- 



GcpiiiglitTS^' 



;to 



COPyRIGIiT DEPOSm 



FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 



'Jh^y^ 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NKW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



FACTS, THOUGHT, AND 
IMAGINATION 

A BOOK ON PVRITING 



BY 

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Ph.D. 

FREDERICK ERASTUS PIERCE, Ph.D. 

WILLARD HIGLEY DURHAM, Ph.D. 

OF THE 

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC 
SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY 



NetD gork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1917 

All rights reurved 






OOPTBIGHT, 1917, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1917. 



.JUL 12 1917 



NotbTooti ^ress 

J. S, Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©GIA4B7820 






PREFACE 

The authors of this volume have long felt the need of a 
book on writing which should view the subject as it presents 
itself to the writer, that is, as the problem of how to prepare 
the raw material of thought, knowledge, or experience for 
expression in words. They have wished to put into the 
hands of their students a book that should take up the study 
of English composition where formal rhetorics of an ele- 
mentary character leave it, a book upon handling facts 
and developing thought. The three theoretical chapters 
of this volume represent an attempt to supply this need. 
They are to be regarded as three essays upon writing, to 
be read by students who have subjects ready, and need 
advice. This departure from the usual textbook method 
will commend itself to teachers who wish to break free 
from the conventional ruts of composition work. These 
essays not only give instructions for writing, but also, di- 
rectly or by implication, suggest an abundance of subjects ; 
they will be found, the authors hope, to be comprehensive 
in plan and thorough in detail. But their chief aim is to 
teach principles, not rules, to discuss the practical require- 
ments for handling facts and thought. It is as a second-year 
or second-term book that this volume is presented, to be 
used by men or women who have been taught all they can 
absorb of Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis, and need most 
of all to write. 

This experiment in a new method Is based upon a success- 
ful course, now three years old. The course itself begins 

V 



vi PREFACE 

with a careful drill in the difference between fact and no 
fact or part fact. The use of important and interesting 
documents from contemporary writing makes the student 
feel the significance of this training for his intellectual self- 
respect. At the same time he is given practice, both oral 
and written, in precis making, as a means of guaranteeing 
accuracy and thoroughness in his reading, and precision in 
the planning of his own work. Next comes the study of 
the means and methods of thought development, freely 
illustrated as before from good writing, and driven home 
by practice in composing articles, essays, editorials, and 
arguments. Next and last is the indirect method of han- 
dling ideas, too little considered in textbooks, the method of 
the story with a moral, the play with an idea, the satiric 
sketch, and all those forms of writing where the imagination 
serves as a bridge over which thought may progress to its 
desired end. 

For such a course this book has been planned ; and there- 
fore, throughout the three following chapters, subject matter 
has been given precedence over form. Facts, thought, 
imagination in the service of thought, have taken the place 
of the usual rhetorical categories. 

The selections included in this book have been tested by 
classroom experience. They are not to be regarded merely 
as illustrations of rhetorical theory, but also as material 
for laboratory practice in the technique of composition. It 
will be noted, however, that in conformity with the plan of 
the volume they have been selected for the interest of their 
subject matter as much as, if not more than, for technical 
excellence. The grouped reports of historical events will 
provide an exercise in the testing of fact more instructive 
than a hundred pages of comment. The essays, the stories, 
and the plays have been chosen because the ideas they present 
are fresh, definite, often debatable, and always interesting 



PREFACE vii 

to the college undergraduate. A nucleus of excellent ma- 
terial for precis writing, for the analysis of fact, and the 
pursuit of thought, is thus made part of this book. The 
value of such an accessible body of tested material is known 
to every teacher; but the book is not limited by its con- 
tents. It is designed to be used in closest connection with 
good reading of every kind, whether drawn from other 
courses the student may be pursuing, or from such peri- 
odicals as "The Atlantic Monthly," "The New RepubHc," 
or "The Yale Review." With such additions of material 
from without, the theory presented can be made the basis 
of a full and satisfying year's work. Indeed, the scope of 
this volume is as wide as the intellectual needs of the under- 
graduate writer. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface v 

Acknowledgments . xi 



PART I 

THEORY 
Chapter I. Facts . . . Frederick Erastus Pierce i 
Chapter II. Thought . . Henry Seidel Canhy . 24 
Chapter III. Imagination in 

THE Service of Thought . Willard Higley Durham 45 

PART II 

ILLUSTRATIONS 

Group One 

(To accompany Chapter I) 

Habit Formation and Refor- 
mation Eliott Park Frost . . 65 

The Odyssey of the Sockeye 

Salmon William Charles Scully 84 

The Coronation of Charles 

THE Great .... From various sources . 100 

Accounts of the Naval Battle 

of Jutland .... From various sources . iii 

ix 



CONTENTS 



Group Two 

(To accompany Chapter II) 
Penny Dread- 



THE Forgotten 



A Defence of 

FULS 

The Case of 

Man 

Life, Art, and America 

The Moral Equivalent of War 

The Prolongation of Peace 



G. K, Chesterton . 

William Graham Sumner 
Theodore Dreiser . 
William James 
Simeon Strunsky . 



PAOS 

155 

i6i 
173 
195 
210 



Group Three 

(To accompany Chapter III) 
The Speech of Ellis (from "A 

Modern Symposium") . . G. Lowes Dickinson . 225 
The Passing of the Third Floor 

Back Jerome K. Jerome . 236 

The Story of the Last Trump H. G. Wells . . .261 
Two Plays Alfred Sutro 

The Man on the Kerb 279 

The Bracelet 292 

APPENDIX 
Directions for Making a Precis 317 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Acknowledgment is here made of the kindness shown 
by the following publishers In allowing material to be re- 
printed from works copyrighted by them : " The Atlantic 
Monthly " ; Dodd, Mead, & Co. ; The George H. Doran 
Co. ; Doubleday, Page & Co. ; Harper & Brothers ; " The 
New York Times"; "The Seven Arts"; ''The Yale 
Review " ; The Yale University Press. Detailed acknowl- 
edgments will be found In connection with the separate 
articles. 



PART I 

CHAPTER I 
FACTS 



Ancient writers usually bracketed war and pestilence 
together as the two great evils of mankind. War remains 
with us; but the most terrible forms of pestilence during 
the last eighty years have been almost driven from the 
earth by the advances of medical science. Yellow fever 
no longer ravages Havana; the Black Plague is being 
hunted even from its lair in dirty, primitive Asia. Through- 
out once deadly Panama — over the bones of uncounted 
Chinese coolies whom the mosquitoes and climate killed — 
delicate women now make their homes and grow strong. 
In the Crimean war seven-eighths of the deaths were due 
to sickness, about twelve per cent, to wounds received in 
battle. During the far greater conflict that began in 
August, 1914, these proportions have been nearly re- 
versed. The comparison of such figures from different 
periods shows a mighty revolution in the living conditions 
of the race; and that far-reaching revolution was made 
possible by the patient accumulation and the wise interpre- 
tation of facts. Millions of apparently petty details had 
to be observed and recorded by thousands of men before 
the causes and cures of bubonic plague, smallpox, typhus, 
and yellow fever were discovered. Could all the note-books, 
memoranda of experiments, and painfully gathered tables 



2 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

of statistics, that through decades prepared the way for 
these great discoveries, be piled together, they would form 
a pyramid perhaps not incomparable to Cheops in size, 
and certainly far more useful to mankind. 

The history of this hygienic revolution well illustrates 
how completely our modern system of thought is based 
upon a wide and accurate knowledge of facts. This is 
hardly more true of hygiene than of other sciences. War 
is no longer decided either by the physical might of Achilles 
or by the sudden inspirations of Joan of Arc. Before the 
first cannon booms, millions of facts, military, geographical, 
historical, and economic, have been accumulated in the 
war offices of the prospective belligerents; and these facts 
would enable their possessors to outgeneral an unprepared 
Napoleon. "Now I can take a holiday," said Von Moltke, 
the German chief of staff, when he learned that his country 
in 1870 had declared war on France. Soon after, being 
informed of some unexpected development in French strat- 
egy, he pointed to his card catalogue, the accumulated 
data of half a lifetime, and answered, "It is all in drawer 
number so-and-so." In the same way a painstaking 
knowledge of detail often lies at the bottom of industrial 
success. According to the newspapers, when the battle- 
ship Oregon was on her trial trip, a reporter said to the head 
of the firm that built her: "Are you not worried.^ The 
breaking of a ten-cent bolt may cost you a hundred thousand 
dollars in premiums for extra speed." "No bolt will break," 
he is reported to have answered, "I know them all per- 
sonally." 

"But," exclaim readers who are more literary than 
scientific, "is not this glorification of facts rank sordid- 
ness and commercialism t Does it not substitute the 
card catalogue and microscope for the altar and art gal- 
lery?" By no means. The greatest poets, painters, 



FACTS 3 

and architects have been supreme partly through their 
mastery of facts. The details which they observed were 
aesthetic, not utilitarian, but none the less facts. The poet 
who first saw the beauty of 

"The yellow wall-flower stained with iron-brown,'* 

or of the sunset sky, 

"With its peculiar tint of yellow green," 

just as definitely added a new fact to our mental store- 
house as the scientist who first observed the hookworm. 
It was partly by their greater wealth of observed facts — 
glorified by the imagination, if you will, but none the less 
facts — that Wordsworth, Burns, and Keats excelled in 
their nature poetry the vague, generalizing rhymers of 
Queen Anne. When Tennyson describes a young lady's 
nose as 

"Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower," 

he shows himself a keen observer of details in regard to 
both flowers and faces. Wherein lies the success of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds as a portrait painter if not in his minute 
scrutiny of a thousand details concerning the rounding of 
a cheek or the precise curve in a lock of hair .? Whether 
men are following business for money and position or are 
artists and visionaries in quest of beauty, they need ability 
to see and use the uncounted facts in their particular field 
of existence. "The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye^^* 
says Carlyle, "there it lies; no man whatever, in what 
province soever, can prosper at all without these." 

In one sense of the word, everything which truly exists 
is a fact. According to one definition, the relation of God 
to his universe could be considered a fact, incomprehensible 
to mortal mind, but actually there. Such an all-embrac- 



4 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

ing conception, however, would defeat the purpose of this 
volume. The word "fact," as used in the following pages, 
stands in the first place for separate details ascertained 
by the five senses : the odor of a shrub, the contour of a 
mountain, the peculiar tint of overheated metal, the fatal 
dagger thrust that some one saw. It would include also 
similar facts of experience drawn from a wide field and 
tabulated as statistics. It stands in the second place for 
isolated details that must be determined by reason because 
nobody was present to see or hear them. The height of 
a prehistoric animal whose thigh bones only are found, the 
exact nature of a crime that nobody witnessed, these would 
be facts as far as they could be determined. Under the 
word are also included truths demonstrated by experiment, 
such as the fact that oxygen and hydrogen mixed in due 
proportions form water. For the sake of clearness the pres- 
ent book draws a fairly sharp distinction — sharper than 
that found in actual life — between this realm of facts and 
the realm of ideas. To the latter belong studies of far- 
reaching general principles, brilliant suggestions that coitie 
spontaneously and can be tested by facts later, problems 
of the relationship between man and man or between man 
and his environment. 

Facts, as we have said, may be employed for either utili- 
tarian and scientific or for aesthetic and literary ends. The 
latter use will be considered in a later chapter; the former 
concerns us at present. 

II 

This is a book on writing, and discusses facts only as a 
means to that end. Whatever his material, it is every 
writer's duty toward his reader to see that his data are in 
some respects new and in all important respects true. If 
he fails in the first requirement he is usually a bore; if in 



FACTS 5 

the second, he is — intentionally or unintentionally — a 
liar. Hence the problem for the would-be author is always 
a double one : to amass a wealth of material, and to handle 
it discerningly and honestly. 

It is when he is writing on facts gathered by firsthand 
personal observation that this problem confronts him in 
its simplest phase. The traveler preparing a lecture on 
scenery and manners in countries he has visited ; the spy 
transmitting his report of fortresses examined ; the geologist 
giving an account of regions surveyed by him ; the inspector 
reporting on factories under his charge ; the polar explorer 
writing a book on his hardships and discoveries — all of 
these men face certain similar problems. These same 
considerations confront also the undergraduate who writes 
of some locality, building, or exciting situation. 

Before all things else, before the planning of paragraphs 
or the polishing of phrases, must come the power to see much 
and clearly. Details which an ordinary man would over- 
look may be precisely the factors that give beauty to a de- 
scription or significance to a spy's report. But, beyond 
this consideration, the author must realize the significance 
of facts and distinguish the essential from the unessential. 
Every man daily sees a thousand things not worth remem- 
bering; he may notice a few, the recording and interpre- 
tation of which are a service to the community. The haggard 
face that shows disease and unsanitary conditions in the 
workshop is something more than a mere face, it is a revela- 
tion. When the first explorer among the Niam-niam sav- 
ages saw quarters of human bodies hanging like pork in 
the market place, he beheld a sight the significance of which 
was not to be forgotten. In a hundred similar ways the 
trained eye can derive from its surroundings a truth worth 
uttering. 

When a man has observed life until he has a mass of new 



6 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

and valuable data to present, then, and not till then, should 
he attempt to reduce it to written form. The problems 
of actual composition are many; and any elementary text- 
book will give rules for expressing the gathered material 
in clear, orderly, and condensed form. What concerns 
us here is not a repetition of these well-known formulas, 
but the way in which observation enables men to apply 
them with new force and vitality ; for that, and not mechani- 
cal structure, is the aim of the present chapter. Not only 
does observation give the writer something to express, 
it aids him in the actual expression. A factory inspector 
presents a well-written report only when he knows what 
points to emphasize and what points to slur. Choice of 
words is one of the marks of a good style ; yet how can the 
traveler choose the precise words in describing the color 
and shape of a foreign tree unless he has trained his vision 
to notice hues and forms .? Only when the hitherto care- 
less author has learned to visualize in his imagination the 
thing that he is talking about, to realize its significance 
and far-reaching effects — only then does he realize how in- 
adequately he has passed the fact from his brain to his 
reader^s by the first ill-chosen word that suggested itself. 
How can an author develop a paragraph by the method of 
examples or detail unless he has at hand the facts which are 
his examples .? One of the chief virtues of Macaulay as 
an orator was his ability to buttress up any point by numer- 
ous illustrations from past history. It was the power of 
his mind in amassing facts that made him able to round out 
a convincing paragraph. In the arrangement and style 
of an essay, as in all things else, knowledge is power, and 
accumulated facts are knowledge. 

One need not be a great author or traveler in order to 
find the above principles useful. Let any man walk with 
discerning eye through the slums, the museums, the art 



FACTS 7 

galleries, or the wharves of a great city, and then write his 
experiences. Proper variations of emphasis on his different 
points will come naturally from the varying intensity of his 
emotions; his paragraphs will round out spontaneously 
from the wealth of gathered material ; amusement, indigna- 
tion, and enthusiasm in alternation will give him words 
that sting and glow instead of the hackneyed vocabulary 
of textbooks; and if in the end he does not write well it 
will be largely because he has not yet learned to see well. 

Ill 

Next to facts gained by simple observation come those 
acquired by experiment. Of these, the most simple and 
conclusive are those derived from the laboratories of the 
physical sciences, where various ingredients can be tested 
first together, then separately, and the varying results noted. 
Such experiments have led to most of the great discoveries 
in chemistry, physics, medicine, and machinery. The 
results, like those of observation, are usually definite and 
unquestionable, and can be used in the same way to buttress 
a point or furnish an illustration. Moreover, an account 
of the experiment itself may become valuable reading matter 
for the public, partly because it suggests new lines of similar 
experiments, still more because of the appeal that it makes to 
the restless ingenuity and eager curiosity of the human mind. 

A greater interest for the average man, however, is found 
in another field, where the elements to be examined are 
neither simple nor separable, but complex in themselves, 
and still more complex through the inextricable way in 
which they are twisted together. They must be examined, 
not in some simple combination arranged wholly by the 
investigator, but in an exceedingly complicated one made 
by nature and only slightly modified by the experimenter. 
Such are the problems of the social sciences, dealing with 



8 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

human passions, causes and consequences of war, of immo- 
rality, of race suicide, of economic success and failure. The 
simple pairing off of related phenomena and elimination 
of every other disturbing element, which is the chief feature 
of the laboratory experiment, become impossible. What 
man ever separated the intemperance of a drunkard from 
his other characteristics, and examined its reactions when 
combined or not combined with ten measures of will power .«* 
Chemistry makes a few perfect experiments under ideal con- 
ditions and arrives at certainty ; the social sciences, finding 
this rarely possible, fall back on a great number of im- 
perfect experiments which gradually approximate toward 
certainty with the increase in the number of attempts. 
The mental training developed by experiment in physical 
sciences is helpful to the social scientist. The methods of 
reasoning in the two fields are often similar, but must in 
the study of economics and government be supplemented 
by such a knowledge of life as no textbook can give. 

Yet more vague in their details, but still depending at 
bottom on the old principles of elimination and compari- 
son, are the experiments, not of any science, but of what is 
usually spoken of as human experience. All life is, in one 
sense of the word, an unending experiment in an eternal 
laboratory. Every test of a neighbor's temper is an experi- 
ment, every new device for entertaining a guest. All these 
become part of the tissue of life, part of what the writer 
must handle in either scientific or literary work. 

Detailed directions for making experiments in either the 
physical or social sciences can be found in other books. Our 
present concern is with the use of such procedure for pur- 
poses of writing. In the first place, any fact gained by a 
trustworthy form of experiment — like the facts gained by 
observation — can be employed for purposes of proof or illus- 
tration, without reference to the methods by which it was 



FACTS 9 

proved to be a fact. The truth about human evolution is 
daily used to illustrate thoughts on widely differing subjects, 
and used by men who do not even know the experimental 
processes that Darwin followed. In addition, an account 
of the actual experimental procedure is often valuable for 
writing. It may strengthen an argument for or against 
the encouragement of certain experiments by showing 
how the very attempt now mooted wholly failed or partly 
succeeded before. It may further become a means of ex- 
pressing exact truth by showing precisely how far a certain 
experiment was, how far it was not, convincing, and just 
what reservations we should make in accepting the results. 
The history of social reform is a never-ending study of par- 
tial success in man's ever varying attempts. Even for the 
most purely imaginative literature descriptions of scientific 
methods have a distinct value. Novels, tales, and dramas 
teem with imaginary experiments, not always possible 
in actual life, perhaps, but suggested by the methods of 
genuine science. Mr. Thomas's "Witching Hour" and 
Edgar Poe's "Strange Case of Monsieur Valdemar" both 
turn on experiments in mesmerism. A narrative of country 
life might gain excellent local color from the scientific testing 
both of provincial tempers and of farming machinery. Any 
man who desires to become a stimulating and forcible writer 
may well train himself to examine all phenomena of life 
with which he comes in touch, now separately, now together, 
now under one set of circumstances, now another, until he 
has thus gained insight into their true nature and causes 
and so laid up plentiful material for future writing which 
men will be eager to read. 

IV 

So much for facts obtained at first hand by the writer's 
own observation or experiment. It is somewhat humiliat- 



lO FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

ing to realize how small a part of any man's knowledge 
falls into either of these categories. At every turn one 
must depend instead upon facts gained at second hand, 
facts of which one knows nothing except what other men 
have told him. How do we know that there is a frigid 
zone .? Most of us, certainly, have never been there. Why 
are we certain that the human race existed two hundred 
years ago I We were not alive then to see. Why shudder 
at the reported horrors of the Inquisition .? We have no 
first-hand proof even that the water torture is disagreeable, 
much less that anybody was ever so tortured. Few of us 
have had any ocular proof that Europe during and after 
1914 was not in a state of the most exemplary tranquillity. 
Why are our readers convinced that a plural subject requires 
a plural verb ? They have not examined one one-millionth 
of the printed books in the language ; they have not heard 
that language from one one-thousandth of the English- 
speaking world ; — and half of that less than one one-thou- 
sandth appear to follow another usage. Nearly all our 
knowledge, on which we depend for our code of honor, our 
present happiness, and our future salvation, is taken on trust 
from the statements of others. 

More ominous yet is the fact that our limited experience 
does not inspire us with implicit trust in such derived knowl- 
edge. A large part of the human race will not tell the truth, 
and another large part cannot if they try. The history 
of cross-questioning in law courts shows that only a small 
minority of witnesses can give a consistently true account 
of what they have actually seen. King David said in his 
haste that all men are liars ; and we may assume that in 
calmer hours he but modified slightly the numerical adjec- 
tive. Even the works of our most erudite scholars are 
found by other scholars to be full of crass errors in fact. 
No textbook on geology fifty years old would be tolerated 



FACTS II 

in a modern university. Warton's "History of English 
Poetry," which five generations ago was a masterpiece 
in the field of literary history, has now been almost annotated 
out of existence by the desperate efforts of recent editors 
to correct its multitudinous mistakes. If this is true of 
professional scholars, how frail is our dependence on the word 
of the untrained amateur, the immature undergraduate, 
the impulsive enthusiast ; and below them on the drudging, 
unlettered masses. 

It seems at first as if under such conditions one must 
despair of genuine knowledge; must accept the universe 
as a terra incognita, peopled with fictions, dreams, and de- 
lusions. Deeper analysis, however, shows that this is not 
the case. Most men may be inaccurate witnesses, but all 
their separate statements are not falsehoods ; and truth 
may usually be sifted out of untruth if only the right process 
is known. Modern architects have learned how to build 
the most heavy sky-scrapers on foundations that are little 
better than shifting mud ; and on a foundation of testi- 
mony equally unstable, man may rear a reasonably accurate 
body of knowledge, once he has found the method. This 
task lies especially in the province of the speaker or writer. 
As an author he is the transmitter of thought, therefore the 
custodian of truth. Every statement which he repeats 
without examination may be a lie which he thereby endorses. 
In the historian this may prove a gross injustice to the no- 
blest of his contemporaries, or a libel on a whole people. 
In books on science and finance it may become a false beacon, 
luring misguided readers along dangerous paths to their 
ruin. The undergraduate who like a parrot reports an un- 
tested statement to a Discipline Committee may find him- 
self the means of expelling an innocent man from college 
or of rendering an honorable amateur ineligible for a cham- 
pionship team. 



12 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

How then is the writer to grasp and impart truth in this 
befogged and befibbed world ? His first requisite is the 
power to repeat accurately to others what has already been 
told accurately to him. The man who does this becomes 
a benefactor of his race, one of a small and noble aristocracy 
at once honest and scholarly. Law courts either reject 
second-hand evidence entirely or discount it heavily. They 
do this because they have learned through the centuries 
that few people can reproduce accurately what some one 
else has told them. Error grows like a snowball in its 
passage from mind to mind. Not until a man has over- 
come this tendency has he any right to meddle with the 
thought of his age by entering into print. Swift tells us 
in his "Voyage to Laputa" that the commentators on 
Homer and Aristotle durst not come near these worthies, 
so wroth were the two great men at the way that they had 
been misinterpreted; yet the fate of Homer and Aristotle 
was mild compared with that of many a modern scholar, 
whose noblest thoughts, the result, perhaps, of years of 
labor, have been garbled and travestied and turned from 
truth into falsehood by the most morally irreproachable 
of our young college men, not in examinations only, but 
in conversation, and even in print. 

What is meant by truth in the reproduction of another 
man's statements .? Partly, the most rigid accuracy of 
detail. Any man may forget and omit; no man has a 
right to forget and garble. What is given at all must be 
given correctly. Details are often sacred things, no matter 
how small they seem. A young man in Europe writes 
home to a local paper that one thousand innocent people 
were killed in a recent massacre, when the real number 
reported to him was only ten. The difference in significance 
is great, for the larger the number of innocent dead, the 
stronger is the presumption that the brutal spirit account- 



FACTS 13 

able for their fate was national and not merely local. Had 
this man changed 10 to 1000 on a check he would have 
received five years at hard labor ; yet is not a printed slur 
on a nation's honor more criminal than some slight pilfering 
from her coffers ? In Grant's campaign of the Wilderness 
a careless dispatching officer, copying an order, inadvertently 
wrote a wrong destination, and thereby sent thousands of 
men miles from their proper position in the crisis of a great 
action. He made a slip of only a word ; yet it almost 
decided a battle, and might have decided a war. 

Mere accuracy of detail, however, is not reproduction 
of the truth. It is as if a thief who had stolen the Mona 
Lisa should return its mangled fragments as an honest 
equivalent for the purloined masterpiece. Truth in pro- 
portion and in subordination is just as essential as truth in 
details. Relative emphasis on different points, order, 
relation, the subservience of one idea to another, must all 
be preserved. Stevenson in "Pulvis et Umbra" stresses 
the brutality of man's origin and environment, but uses 
this point merely as a means to prove man's nobility in 
struggling so bravely under such a terrible handicap. The 
most accurate report of his paragraphs on man's origin and 
surroundings, separated from the main thought to which 
the author made them subordinate, would give an utterly 
distorted conception of Stevenson's meaning. 

Two forms of writing which illustrate how the principles 
so far discussed can be applied are the book review and the 
precis. A reviewer does not necessarily give an orderly 
and logical digest of the book he is discussing; but it is 
frequently desirable to do so, especially with works on 
science or social and military conditions, where the conclu- 
sions are not disputed, the style is a minor matter, and the 
substance of the book needs to be widely diffused and justly 
understood. Such a review would bear the same relation 



14 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

to the book discussed as a miniature does to the human 
face it copies. The main points of the author must be 
accurately grasped and fairly worded ; the reviewer should 
apportion his emphasis among them approximately as the 
author does. Detailed statements should be accurately 
reproduced in connection with the main points which they 
are intended to illustrate; and since all details cannot be 
reproduced in such limited space, those chosen should be 
typical of those omitted. 

The precis is a condensation of a book, essay, or lecture, 
and aims to present the given subject matter as justly 
and fully as possible in limited space. Its practical value 
lies in the clearness of its outline and the saving of time for 
its readers. It has also a great disciplinary value as train- 
ing for the man who makes it; and for that reason, at the 
stage which our discussion has now reached, every writer 
not already familiar with the precis should practice it until 
he feels that he is able to transmit facts to another at least 
as accurately as they came to him.^ 



If the whole world could be trained to reproduce facts 
and conclusions with the accuracy which we have just out- 
lined, nothing more might be necessary. Unfortunately 
this is not the case. Trained, scientific, honest minds are 
always a little minority in the midst of the wilfully dishonest 
or the mentally confused. The lawyer or judge finds him- 
self confronted by a vast mass of inconsistent and conflicting 
evidence, all of which cannot be true, and very little of which 
can be blindly trusted. Even worse, perhaps, is the situa- 
tion of a Commission of Inquiry — such, for example, as 
the Bryce Commission which examined into the alleged 

* For directions in writing a precis see Appendix I, p. 317. 



FACTS 15 

atrocities of the Germans around Louvain. They find before 
them a chaos of contradictory statements, allegations dis- 
torted by hatred, exaggerated by hysteria, or concocted 
by deliberate dishonesty, truth suppressed by fear or mis- 
conceived through sheer stupidity. Accurate reproduction 
of these different stories in manuscript is an initial step 
toward the truth, but merely a step. The actual verity, 
the faithful picture of all that really happened, probably 
exists in no living brain, could not be obtained by bare 
recording of individual impressions if the members of such 
a commission were mind-readers ; it must be toilsomely 
pieced together by testing, selection, rejection, and even 
then may be only imperfectly attained. For it must always 
be remembered that in the world of human experience — 
as contrasted with the world of pure mathematical reason- 
ing — much of the time we can gain but a partial and broken 
conception of what happened ; even the most rigorous and 
judicious method can frequently give only that as a result. 
We found our plans for business or battle alike on proba- 
bilities, not certainties ; we exalt one man to the gallows and 
another to the presidential chair on strong but inconclu- 
sive evidence. Yet, although the wise man as well as the 
fool must proceed on guesswork, the wise man guesses 
shrewdly in the light of all obtainable evidence and nine 
times out of ten succeeds, while the fool leaps blindly and 
usually fails. In other words, though the systematic weigh- 
ing of evidence may produce only fragmentary knowledge, 
such knowledge is often of inestimable value in practical 
affairs. 

What then is the proper method of procedure ^ Let us 
illustrate its nature in a particular case. Let us suppose 
there have been labor troubles of a most serious type in 
a certain mining district; and a Commissioner has been 
sent by the Federal Government to ascertain the facts. 



I6 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

He hears lengthy statements from union laborers, strike 
breakers, capitalists, superintendents, innocent bystanders, 
and officers of the militia ; reduces all these statements 
to writing, and then compares them. Immediately the 
manuscript begins to bristle with interrogation marks. 
The strikers declare that their pay was not a living wage. 
Was it.^ They say that they were forced to buy their 
groceries from the company's stores. Were they f The 
militia assert that one of their number was shot intention- 
ally by strikers ; the union men answer that he was the 
victim of a private grudge. Which is right .^ And so the 
dispute goes on. Let us assume that the systematic Com- 
missioner gradually reduces the whole problem to a long list 
of such questions, each kept separate from the others ; that 
with a pair of scissors he clips from the carbon copy of the 
manuscript all the answers to each, and ranges them, affirma- 
tive or negative, under their respective headings. 

The first discovery resulting from this method is that 
there are several details on which all parties agree. Evi- 
dently at these points the truth is already attained. If 
men with adverse interests, hating each other, and giving 
each other the lie about most matters, agree on one certain 
detail, who shall say them no ? Here are a few reliable facts 
that begin to loom through the confusion like hilltops 
through dissipating mist. They may be minor points ; 
but if considered carefully they sometimes help to show 
the general contour of the landscape. 

A further search usually reveals other questions as to 
which the evidence is overwhelmingly on one side ; in which 
the weaker party disputes and denies without definite evi- 
dence, while the stronger piles up affidavits, statistics, 
and details. The contrast between the two sides, though 
not perhaps wholly convincing, is certainly impressive; 
and if the evidence of the preponderating party will bear 



FACTS 17 

the most rigorous tests — such as will be discussed in a 
moment — absolute certainty may follow. 

There remain a large number of questions, each with a 
formidable mass of testimony on either side. Here the 
affirmative and negative statements must be weighed against 
each other in a mental balance, and as just a decision made 
as possible, though it avowedly decides what is probably, 
not what is certainly, right. The various devices for weigh- 
ing in this balance involve the most intricate and delicate 
machinery of thought and vary so much in individual cases 
that they can be best discussed if the typical case of the 
Commissioner is temporarily laid aside, to be taken up again 
later. 

Tests of evidence are frequently classified under the heads 
of honesty, prejudice, and mental competence; but many 
interrelations, many subordinate and possibly supplemen- 
tary headings have to be considered in facing a practical 
problem. Honesty in the witness is exceedingly important; 
yet notorious criminals, Becker, for instance, have been 
executed on the testimony of men who acknowledged a 
past replete with falsehood. There is a stupid dishonesty 
which from sheer force of habit lies with verminlike persist- 
ency; there is an intelligent dishonesty which will lie atro- 
ciously for great stakes but tell the unvarnished truth when 
there is little or nothing to gain by falsehood. Also consist- 
ency is almost as important a test as is the witness's char- 
acter for veracity. If all the details of a man's story are 
consistent with each other, and consistent, to the most 
minute detail, with the stories of several other men, he may 
have lied repeatedly In the past, but he Is probably telling 
the truth now; so hard Is it for even the most ingenious 
brain to evolve fictions that will fit in at every point with 
reaHtles. Such testimony from an avowedly dishonest 
man, however, becomes worthy of consideration only when 
c 



1 8 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

it has been subjected to a searching cross examination, 
which would reveal any discrepancies that existed. 

Mental competence is an important test; but mental 
competence is a vague term and needs defining. The same 
man may have great powers of judgment and remarkable 
weakness of memory; might judge almost infallibly on 
facts presented by others and yet be highly unreliable con- 
cerning events of which he had long ago been an eye-witness. 
Then, too, when we leave the courtroom for more literary 
arenas of thought, what shall we say of the imaginative tem- 
perament, which lives partly in a universe of its own fancies 
and may be constitutionally unable to separate the world 
of realities from its own superimposed world of dreams ? 
Here arises a vital problem in writing biographies of geniuses 
or books on the history of art and literature. The very 
men who in some ways are the most competent judges are 
accustomed to think of external facts as the crude material 
which they may melt and reshape in their imaginative fur- 
nace ; they are at once the most and the least reliable of wit- 
nesses. Again, there are problems in life which depend 
on sympathy as well as logic; and the dependable witness 
is he who has discerning sympathy — intelligent fellow feel- 
ing and not blind sentimentalism. Was Byron sincere 
behind his melodramatic pose, or was he an unhallowed com- 
pound of misanthropy and gigantic vanity ? Mere logic 
could never answer; the only convincing answer can result 
from that harmonious action of the brain and heart which 
we have called discerning sympathy. Several of Byron's 
contemporaries, Scott among them, had this quality; and 
because we feel its presence in them we respect their testi- 
mony concerning the redeeming side of the passionate 
prodigal son of literature. 

Associated sometimes with the question of the witness's 
honesty, sometimes with that of his mental dependability 



FACTS 19 

is a valuable supplementary test, the definiteness or vague- 
ness of his account. The excess of hazy generalities in 
Dr. Cook's lectures on his Polar journey first awakened 
public suspicion. Some of the witnesses before an Inquiry 
Commission present plentiful statistics and masses of detail, 
while others deal in vague generalizations. To be sure, 
if the details offered are such that they cannot possibly be 
verified they may prove nothing but the speaker's imagi- 
native powers. Gulliver gave unlimited details about the 
non-existent island of Lilliput because he knew that no 
one would sail there to expose him. If, however, the wit- 
ness's details are such that an enemy could disprove them 
were they false, the mere fact that he dares to offer 
them is evidence of his truthfulness. Every definite state- 
ment then becomes a test; and he is voluntarily meeting 
as many tests as possible. If a man's honesty is admitted, 
the fuller his statement of concrete facts, the greater its 
probative value. Details and statistics show either that 
he has had unusual opportunities for acquiring knowledge 
or else that he has unusual powers for using such oppor- 
tunities as were given — in either case that he is mentally 
an exceedingly reliable man. 

The question of bias or prejudice is of great Importance. 
If a writer's .statements run parallel to his prepossession, 
they should be discounted ; if counter to it, they should be 
given additional weight. Yet the amount to be added or 
subtracted — in the case of a man who, though biased, is 
thoroughly honest — varies greatly according to circum- 
stances. Prejudice is exceedingly distorting In matters 
of opinion or Inference ; in questions determined by count- 
ing, by measurement, or by any other mechanical action of 
the hand or brain, it may become almost negligible. An 
honest but jealous woman would give a very unreliable 
verdict on her rival's beauty, but a reasonably trustworthy 



20 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

statement as to the latter's height and color of hair. The 
two largest stained windows in England are in York and 
Gloucester cathedrals. A conscientious verger of York, 
who had measured both, could be trusted as to their relative 
dimensions but not concerning their relative value as works 
of art. Also, the more intelligent the writer, the more the 
thinking man's instinctive love of accuracy will struggle 
against his bias and enable him to tell the exact truth, if 
he honestly wishes to do so. On the other hand, violent 
prejudice may at times develop into temporary dishonesty. 
Such overwhelming passions as patriotism and mother 
love may, under peculiar and transitory conditions, drag 
people of the noblest character into deliberate falsehood. 
Dulce est pro patria mentiri, says the sardonic proverb, 
"Sweet it is to lie for one's country"; and the statements 
of impassioned patriots, mothers, and partisans should 
always be taken only for what they are worth. 

Another test of any statement presented is what is called 
its "antecedent probability," that is, the question whether 
our whole background of experience in related matters 
makes it seem probable or preposterous that such a thing 
could happen. "Who would believe," says a character in 
Shakespeare's "Tempest," 

" that there were such men 
Whose heads stood in their breasts?" 

The hearer's doubt in this case is due, not to any known 
dishonesty or bias or stupidity in the teller, but to the pre- 
posterous nature of the thing told. Yet here also a word 
of caution is needed. The rich do not always think like 
the poor, nor the Italians like the Anglo-Saxons, nor the 
young like the old, nor decadent criminals like healthy- 
minded jurists. "Put yourself in the other man's place," 
says the proverb ; but to put yourself in his place when your 



FACTS 21 

whole attitude toward life is different from his and then to 
reason out what you would have done is to believe him when 
he Hes and doubt him when he tells the truth. Especially 
should this caution be borne in mind when the question 
concerns the conduct of foreign races, or of social types 
with which the investigators are not familiar. 

Such are the general principles for sifting conflicting 
statements on any problem. Now let this be applied to 
the Federal Commissioner, whose case was recently dis- 
cussed as a typical one. Guided by the principles just 
outlined, he would go through his accumulated mass of 
evidence. He would encounter certain facts admitted by 
all ; others denied by one side, it is true, but overwhelmingly 
established by their opponents ; and many with much evi- 
dence on both sides where weighing and sifting showed 
one party to be apparently more trustworthy than the other. 
On the strength of this he would be in a position to give a 
final verdict, obviously not infallible, but as righteous 
and intelligent as the limited human mind can hope to 
achieve. 

Having fulfilled his duty as judge, the Commissioner 
would next face the problem of authorship, in this case the 
writing of the report embodying his verdict. Such a report 
is intended, in part at least, for the public, for readers not 
only ignorant of many facts but also woefully confused as 
to the issues involved. To meet their needs, the pamphlet 
would naturally open with a clear definition of the problem 
and the main questions connected with it. Then the dis- 
cussion of these questions should follow in coherent order, 
usually seriatim. The subject matter under each heading 
presents a problem in selection and rejection. The public 
wish to know not only the final decision but also the general 
nature of the grounds on which that decision was based. 
On the other hand, they cannot and will not traverse all 



22 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

that dreary chaos of controversy from which it is the busi- 
ness of the Commissioner to evolve order. They wish a few 
brief typical examples of the evidence considered, some 
general statement as to the nature of testimony not quoted 
and as to the line of reasoning followed by the judge. More- 
over, the majority of them have little idea of the relative 
importance of the different questions involved. It is the 
writer's duty by varying the stress on different aspects 
of the problem to distinguish the more from the less impor- 
tant ; otherwise he may give a distorted caricature of truth 
instead of the truth itself. Many incidental stumbling 
blocks will necessarily be met with which cannot be prepared 
for in advance. However, both in sifting material and in 
writing the final pamphlet the following items are always 
essential : a clear conception and definition of the questions 
involved ; a systematic division of material, so that each 
problem may be analyzed and discussed by itself; accuracy 
in the handling of detail ; honesty in the weighing of evi- 
dence ; fairness in the sense of proportion. 

The above method of reasoning and writing is not con- 
fined to industrial problems. Any one who wishes a more 
literary subject may sift the many and conflicting state- 
ments as to the character of Coleridge or of Byron. If he 
is a sportsman he may winnow the seemingly irreconcilable 
testimony as to a certain athlete's ineligibility, or as to the 
exact extent of professionalism in amateur sports. Wherever 
witnesses disagree and a public desires to know the truth, 
the procedure which has just been outlined can be applied. 

The usefulness of such procedure as we have discussed 
is not confined to the production of a precis (including the 
related book review) and the report of an Inquiry Board. 
Neither is it confined to the training which enables an author 
to gather a wealth of material and to use this in rounding 
out and vitalizing the framework of his projected essay. 



FACTS 23 

Beyond all that a rich store of gathered facts has other 
influences, far reaching, although indirect. By the emotions 
and mental attitudes which it produces, this wealth uncon- 
sciously enriches one's style. The emotional residuum of 
uncounted observations, experiments, and experiences molded 
the noble language of the old Hebrew writer when he said : 
" I have been young and now am old ; yet have I not seen the 
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." By 
the same wealth of knowledge, though pessimistic instead of 
cheerful. Swift gave edge to the trenchant satire in which he 
declared that the past history of England "was only a heap 
of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, 
banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, 
hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, 
envy, lust, malice, or ambition, could produce." Lastly, 
as will be shown in the next chapter, this accumulated knowl- 
edge of details becomes the fertile soil out of which ideas 
generate and a wise attitude toward the universe becomes 
possible. 



CHAPTER II 

THOUGHT 
I 

Until a fact is put with other facts and built upon, or 
until it is seized by the emotions and utilized by life, it re- 
mains just a fact, a dead, cold thing, uninspiring and not 
valuable. Thinking and feeling make use of facts. Think- 
ing especially, as has been made clear in the last chapter, 
tests facts, arranges and compounds them into true con- 
clusions. There is not much of value to be done with facts 
unless one is willing to think about them. 

This, however, is not the only way in which thinking is 
connected with good writing. Sometimes the man about to 
write begins with an array of facts ; but quite as frequently 
the germ and first form of that which is to be written is a 
thought, a thought complete as a cell is complete, and 
needing only the test of truth and a logical development. 
This is what is meant when it is said that a man has an 
"idea." It is not a fact that he is possessed of; it is a 
thought ; a thought that must be tested — so far as it is 
possible to do so — by facts ; which must be developed by 
logical processes. The brain, so psychologists tell us, acts 
with kaleidoscopic rapidity. It shakes together an "idea" 
with a single twist — and there is a thought ready to be 
tested for its worth. Such a rapid mental operation, for 
example, in the brain of the French philosopher Rousseau, 
may have produced the idea that there should be essential 

24 



THOUGHT 25 

equality among men. The fire and slaughter of the French 
Revolution tested it by facts. 

Some men sparkle with ideas whenever life surges high 
for them and energy pulses through the brain. Most of 
us are favored now and then by something that may be 
called an idea, or at least a new and personal thought. 
Some unfortunates never have a real idea from one week's 
end to another. But every man who speaks or writes must 
handle thoughts, must test them, must develop them, pre- 
cisely as he must handle facts — if not his own thoughts, 
why then another's. A thought after all is merely a rela- 
tionship. When I connect the idea of food with the idea 
of time, the thought "It must be lunch time" flashes across 
my nervous system. This is an interesting idea, but scarcely 
an original one. When I connect the idea of war with that 
of death, and these two with the loss of so many willing hands 
made idle forever, the thought "War is waste" burns 
itself into my mind. This too is not highly original; but 
it is valuable ; it is worth trying out by the facts ; it is 
worthy of development. 

Here then is the essence of this discussion. Given a 
relationship brought forward by the brain, an idea as we 
call it, how can the truth of that thought be tested, how can it 
be developed so as to be useful for thinker and reader alike ^ 

The first moral to be drawn is painfully obvious. Just 
as it is idle to handle facts until one is certain that they are 
facts, so it is a waste of time to develop a thought until one 
is sure that the thought is worth developing. Why are so 
many "themes" worth just the price of waste paper in a 
glutted market ^ Because they are deficient in fact or weak 
in thought. It is worse than useless to spend time in learn- 
ing to write unless one is willing to search for and capture 
thought. But granted that eager stir of the mind in the 
midst of which real ideas are born, granted an idea at least 



26 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

once a week, which is quite often enough for the purpose, 
how is the infant to be raised and put to work ? That is the 
question. 

An idea, as it has been described in the previous para- 
graphs, is really a hypothesis ; that is, a tentative statement 
whose truth remains to be proved. For example, many 
thinkers, from the Greeks down to Goethe, had put forth 
the idea, which was really a hypothesis, that life proceeds 
by evolution, from lower forms to higher forms, from beast 
to man, from savage to civilization. It remained for Charles 
Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," to test this hypothesis 
by laboriously gathered facts, and by reasoning based 
thereon. Indeed, nearly every great advance of the human 
intellect has begun with an idea, and has proceeded by means 
of a trying-out according to reason and according to the 
facts. So with the lesser steps of personal development. It 
occurs to a teacher in a moment of illumination that the 
average undergraduate would learn more if he did more 
thinking and less listening in the classroom. Is this true } 
There is no way of discovering except to try it out by the 
facts and to use reason where facts fail. That the stars are 
formed of compacted nebula, and that education is not the 
same as information, are both hypotheses. The first might 
make a book ; the second an editorial ; the first is a sub- 
ject for a lifetime of study; the second for a day's thinking; 
but the same principles of test and development apply to 
both. What are these principles ? 

Let us begin with a simple hypothesis such as one meets 
with In any study of scientific method. Let us endeavor 
to prove that an acid and a base will unite to form a salt. 
Given a test-tube, some hydrochloric acid, and a copper 
cent, the test can be made and made successfully. When 
the facts are recorded the hypothesis has been made good. 

But few thoughts that men have to deal with in the course 



THOUGHT 27 

of everyday experience are as simple as this one. When 
the idea involves life values as well as the attributes of dead 
things, it becomes more complex. Let us choose a thought 
whose working out will require more than an experiment 
in elementary chemistry: "The best way to prepare for 
war is to prepare for peace." 

The first step is to test the truth of this proposition. But 
the term "truth" is not so simple as it looks. "'What is 
truth ?' said jesting Pilate, and did not stay for an answer." 
There is truth to facts ; there is truth to reason when facts 
fail us ; and there is emotional truth, which is quite a dif- 
ferent matter. Truth to facts usually deserves the first 
consideration. 

What are the facts which may be used to support the 
assertion that the best way to prepare for war is to prepare 
for peace ^ They may be sought for and obtained by a 
series of questions. What is required for a successful prepara- 
tion for war ? One answers, an adequate army and navy ; 
sufficient armament and munitions ; military skill to direct 
the whole. A little more thinking brings the further answer, 
an industrial and economic system that will support the 
enormous endeavor necessary for modern war. These 
one may fairly call facts. And now what is preparation 
for peace ? Efficiency, organization, the development of 
trained brains, an emphasis upon self-dependence rather 
than upon aggression, a preference of conquests over nature 
to conquests over man. These also are facts. Finally, 
what will be the effect of a preparation for peace upon the 
possible enemy .? In measure as the peaceful nation is 
unaggressive though potentially powerful, desirous of peace 
though efficient for war, in like measure, or at least in some 
measure, the enemy will be slow to attack. This also is a 
fact. Grouped with the others, does it or does it not support 
the hypothesis f 



28 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

.^The truth of the matter is that there are not facts enough 
here either to prove or to disprove the proposition; and it 
is doubtful whether, as the world stands at this time, enough 
could be gathered. If we are to come to any conclusion 
we must trust to a further process, reason, the power of 
convincing ourselves by logical processes of thought, the 
power which, when all the facts available have been obtained, 
will put two and two together to make four. For example, 
as regards the question of peace and war, what can be de- 
duced from the experience of other nations where the facts 
cited above have existed and have led either to peace or 
to war ? What inductions can be made from these facts 
as regards the situation here in America ? What analogies 
can be found to this problem in man's experience in other 
fields than war ? 

It is a very difficult problem. The testing of all real 
thought is difficult; if it is easy there has been no real 
thought! But this, at least, has been established by] these 
preliminaries : the first task of the man with an idea is to 
get the facts available, the next is to apply his reason to 
the handling of these facts. It may be well to begin again 
in this discussion, with another hypothesis. 

As a result of his experience with patients suffering from 
hysteria, the Viennese doctor Freud conceived the idea 
that dreams, instead of being merely wild vagaries of the 
relaxed brain, were, in their own way, coherent, logical, 
and susceptible of interpretation. His idea was that a 
man's dream contains a suppressed wish. The many de- 
sires for things unobtainable by the will in the daytime 
find vent in dreams, and under strange disguises make 
stories of their own in sleep. The facts to be handled in 
endeavoring to prove this supposition were many. He 
collected them. There were the facts as to what men and 
women actually dreamed. There were the facts as to what 



THOUGHT 29 

these same men and women had done the day before the 
dreams in question. There were the facts — -. most difficult 
to secure — of the secret desires his patients had suppressed, 
had forced, as it were, below the level of consciousness. 
This was but a beginning. The next step was to connect 
the three sets of facts. If a given lawyer, let us say, had 
talked in all friendliness with a rival whom he admired, but 
envied ; if he had professed his admiration, but concealed, 
even from himself, his envy; if in a dream that night he 
had seen his rival conduct a case with such stupidity that 
the court was dissolved in scornful laughter, — why then, 
what inference was to be made .? Freud, by a process of 
simple deduction, decided that the envy suppressed in the 
daytime, revealed itself, disguised in a story, at night. 
Then adding to this case a hundred others he was able, by 
reason again, to generalize upon his facts, to say that such 
a relationship among them was generally true. And so he 
maintained that his hypothesis was verified. 

Whether he was right or not, whether anyone is right when, 
after gathering his facts and applying reason, he asserts 
the truth of his hypothesis, depends upon the worth of the 
facts and upon the soundness of the reasoning. If the facts 
are insufficient, or if they are not facts, the hypothesis falls. 
If the reasoning is fallacious, the hypothesis remains a 
hypothesis merely. I can prove with much effectiveness 
that religion is merely an inheritance from ghost fear. The 
study of every primitive race gives facts to support my 
conclusion. The tracing back of every religious ceremony 
confirms it. The line of evolution, proceeding from the 
savage afraid of his friend's ghost to the prophet in awe of 
Jehovah, is direct and whole. But beware of fallacies. 
Man, chemically considered, is a compound of a few simple ele- 
ments only, and yet one learns little of man by knowing 
what he is made of. Fear is only a muscular contraction plus 



30 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

a mental image, but the combination wrecks lives and king- 
doms, shakes beliefs, and gives rise to philosophies. And 
so with religion, which the facts of origin alone fail in any 
way to define or explain. 

And thus the first step in the testing of the truth of thought 
is to get the facts, and the second is to apply these facts by 
sound reasoning. Common sense will take the place of 
elaborate reasoning processes, when only common thoughts 
are in question ; for common sense is precisely the applica- 
tion, by means of short-cut reasoning, of our own experience 
to the case in hand. But common sense is not a safeguard 
in all questions unless it is really uncommon sense of a very 
high order. Few men under middle age have had sufficient 
experience to enable them to judge fairly of thoughts that 
transcend their own narrow field. "There aint no sech 
animal," said the country bumpkin of the giraffe. "There 
is no such woman," says the undergraduate of Ibsen's 
Hedda Gabler, trusting to what he calls his common sense. 
And ideas are no more exempt from such misjudgments 
than women and giraffes. Only reasoning, and clear and 
sound reasoning, will follow the uncommon thought, which 
means the new, the valuable thought, into airy regions 
and bring it back to earth. 

If the world were made up entirely of mathematics, 
chemistry, physics, and economics, the foregoing explana- 
tion of what thought is and how it must be proved in writing, 
might conclude with advice to wrestle with the next idea 
that comes and learn by experience the truth of what has 
been said. . But life is not all mathematics ; the brain 
uses reason, but is seldom governed by it; intuition has 
more practical importance sometimes than logic ; and when 
a man makes up his mind to do a thing, it is nine times 
because he "feels like it," to once because he has reasoned 
it out. As psychologists and philosophers alike have shown 



THOUGHT 3 1 

us, we decide upon our course of action first and find our 
reasons afterwards ; we choose a college, vote the Republican 
ticket, or select a friend, and then and only then reason 
out the wherefore and the why. Back of the reason, indif- 
ferent often to the facts, lie our emotions, our prejudice, 
our tendencies of mind, which will usually determine in 
advance whether in any question the conservative or the 
radical, the pessimistic or the optimistic side will win the 
day with us. In the least decision of the will, influences 
figure that come from the hidden springs of ancestral life 
itself. Upon all such influences reason acts as a partial 
control, but it cannot do away with them ; for logic, which 
is certainly the law of matter, is not always the law of life. 

Therefore a new problem presents itself to the man who 
would learn to write — one too little considered in formal 
textbooks on composition. Truth to facts, truth to reason 
have been defined ; but what is emotional truth ? For 
clearly there will be many questions where the way men 
feel about facts is quite as important as the facts themselves ; 
and just as many where the way one feels is no less important 
than the way one thinks. 

Suppose that one chooses for consideration the not very 
radical idea that poverty is at the root of inefiiciency and 
crime. Bernard Shaw, in his "First Aid for Critics," pref- 
aced to his play "Major Barbara," discusses this thought 
with convincing force, backs up his proof with an abundance 
of facts, turns and twists It by means of clear reasoning 
until it is made to apply to many ills of modern society, 
and afterwards drives home the principle concretely in the 
play. Is it true ? For him, for the problems he discusses, 
one can scarcely deny the validity of the statement. It 
survives the test of fact, the test of reason ; it is emotionally 
true also, for men who view the world as Shaw views it 
must feel that his idea is right. 



32 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

But what about St. Francis of Assisi who courted "Our 
Lady Poverty," who "professed poverty before God and 
before men" as the nearest road to humility of spirit, 
simplicity of soul, and true usefulness 1 What of the hun- 
dreds of thousands of men and women who, not necessarily 
condemning wealth in others, have for themselves followed 
the precept, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall 
eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on." Facts, 
the facts of history, prove that their influence upon the 
world has been invaluable ; for if they have not contributed 
to industrial efficiency they have certainly helped to save 
civilization from a brutish dependence upon mere subsistence 
as a chief end of life. Indeed, reason proves that there 
must be such individuals and such a point of view if we are 
not to sacrifice pity, humility, love, and all the most human 
of the virtues to a soulless efficiency that will give a man 
all the comforts of life without the character to profit by 
them. 

Now what is the truth as to these two proposals ? It 
is not enough to say that Shaw is right for industrial efii- 
ciency and St. Francis for spiritual efficiency, since the ma- 
terial and the spiritual cannot be arbitrarily separated. 
Both are involved in the question as to whether poverty — 
or at least the will to live poorly — is good or bad for the 
morals of man. The answer depends, does it not, to some 
degree at least upon the individual. The truth of either 
proposition depends in some measure upon who says it, 
and for whom It is said. Poverty would probably not be 
very good for Bernard Shaw. Riches would certainly not 
have been good for St. Francis. He spoke sincerely, he 
spoke truly when he said that for many men poverty was 
best. So was Bernard Shaw sincere. He saw that for 
men who held his idea of life and Its value In this world, and 
for many men with no ideas on the subject whatsoever, 



THOUGHT 33 

poverty was bad. The truth in either case is more than 
truth to facts ; it is truth to the character, to the experience, 
to the feelings of the speaker. Each of the two conflicting 
statements that we have been discussing was emotionally- 
true. 

Many hypotheses of course, especially those in the fields 
of science, can be absolutely validated or exploded simply 
by seeking the facts ; but the instance above is typical of 
many more where the personal feelings, the character, the 
innate tendencies of the writer or reader count at least as 
much as the facts, which, incidentally, in such examples 
are never complete enough in themselves to justify a de- 
cision. Who was wrong as to the theory of states' rights 
and the idea of government by an aristocracy, the Virginian 
of i860 or the New Englander of the same period ? The 
New Englander thought that the democracy should rule 
and the state be subordinated to the nation. The Vir- 
ginian believed in control by the "quality" and a sovereign 
state empowered to satisfy its own needs rather than those 
of the central government. Legally the Southerner seems 
to have had the right of the matter; judging by his earlier 
history he may have been right, for although we know the 
results of the Civil War, we do not know what might have 
happened if the South had got its way without a conflict; 
emotionally he was certainly right. The theory of govern- 
ment he supported was the true one for him; so true that 
when it was defeated, he and his type of mind began to dis- 
appear along with the theories of living which they upheld. 

All this explains why emotional appeal is so much more 
powerful than pure reason in writing or speaking. The 
man who wishes to persuade must show his readers not only 
what may be true in the abstract, he must also show what 
is true for them. As an example, race prejudice is a univer- 
sal human heritage that is seldom altogether reasonable. We 



34 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

cannot feel In the same way toward a Japanese as toward 
an American, not because we despise him — we know him 
now too well to do that — but because he is not of our race. 
Now if you disregard this feeling in an argument for closer 
relations with Japan you are simply not being true, — no 
matter how far the abstract truth that men work best in 
brotherly understanding may support you, no matter how 
reasonable it may seem that racial feelings should be sup- 
pressed. As a man thinks so he is, might be more truly 
written, as a man feels so he is. 

Of course all this is not advocacy of prejudice. Prejudice 
is simply feeling that runs dangerously counter to reason, 
although at times it may come very close to emotional truth. 
Prejudices should be fought against, argued with, suppressed 
when possible. In the search for truth they must be com- 
prehended and allowed for; but they cannot be denied. 
They are excessive indications of the particular feeling 
toward life that in the long run determines our course in 
every action as much as, if not more than, reason and the 
plain facts. 

And therefore, if the thought to be developed is personal, 
or if it involves emotions such as love, hate, or prejudice, 
or if it touches upon character or morals, reason of course 
must not be neglected, nor whatever facts may be found to 
bear upon the subject. Both must be pushed as far as they 
will go, and, if possible, the seeker must abide by the results. 
But it is not safe to stop here. The idea will seldom be 
completed, the hypothesis will seldom be fully tested, until 
one has determined whether or not it is absolutely true 
for the writer himself, or for his audience — whether it is 
emotionally true. In that wide field where are to be found, 
among many other subjects, war, philosophy, politics, honor, 
morality, love, and religion, the human, the emotional 
element cannot be left out. There one finds no absolutely 



THOUGHT 35 

verifiable truth. Sincerity to what the writer feels, to what 
he thinks his readers can be made to feel, is the nearest 
approach to a final test. 

If a college professor wishes to explain the charm and 
the value of the academic life, he cannot be content to reason 
about its usefulness, or to present facts to prove that the 
study has influenced the world as much as the business 
office and the senate chamber. He must go deeper. He 
must make his readers feel the infinite value of such a life 
for characters like his ; he must get his love of thinking, 
his belief in thinking, into his words, or those for whom he 
writes will remain unconvinced. Furthermore, since he 
is presumably not writing for other professors, he must 
remember that his readers will be more familiar with the 
active life than the contemplative, and that they will not 
feel as he does about an activity purely intellectual. He 
must allow for the difference between their emotional atti- 
tude and his, as well as the difference between what they 
know and what he knows of the academic life, if he is to 
give his words due weight. He must reason truly, give 
true facts, but most of all recognize a divergence of feeling 
that facts and reason alone will never reconcile. Emotional 
truth, to sum it all up, is gained by a sincere depiction of the 
emotions that lie behind and beneath thought. 

n 

When it comes to testing a thought much depends, as has 
been demonstrated above, upon the nature of the thought. 
But when it comes to developing a thought, to putting the 
results of the testing clearly and simply and directly before 
the reader, there is only one general procedure, though 
with many different applications. It is true that an idea 
can be brought home indirectly to the reader by making 
a story or a play about it. That method will be discussed 



36 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

in the next chapter. But for direct explanation or persua- 
sion the writer must follow the natural laws of the human 
mind — called logic — or fail in his attempt. 

These laws apply as much to the setting forth of facts 
as to the development of thought. They codify, when all 
is said, merely the best ways of putting one man in complete 
possession of what another man is thinking. And which of 
these ways is to be used in a given instance depends always 
and entirely upon the nature of the thought, or the kind of 
facts that have been collected. No one relies upon the 
same stroke in tennis to return every serve; he must know 
all strokes, and choose according to circumstances. Just 
so with the logical development of thought, or the logical 
presentation of facts. 

The best way to make clear this highly practical subject, 
which lies at the heart of construction in writing, is to take 
a topic and work it out. Let the subject be an idea for a 
brief essay: "A college course should first of all develop 
broadmindedness." 

Such a topic as this one is a germ cell. It is capable of 
development by the proper means, but its true nature will 
remain unknown until careful thought has been expended 
upon it. Of precisely what developed thought is this idea 
the germ ? 

The biologist applies his microscope. The writer applies 
his brain. The biologist differentiates the germ cell — 
when possible — from other germ cells by characteristics of 
structure, size, and general appearance; and then and only 
then can guess the conditions that will govern its develop- 
ment. The writer gets acquainted with his idea by studying 
it, by asking himself in this case precisely what is meant by 
broadmindedness. 

Now there is only one way to discover what Is meant by 
a word, a term, or a statement, and that is to define it. LogI- 



THOUGHT 37 

cal definition is a simple process. The subject, a dog for 
instance, is placed in its class, its genus, in this instance the 
genus quadruped ; and then its differentia, that is, its dif- 
ferences from other members of that class, indicated. By 
this process it is easy to define the term dog with scientific 
exactness. And definition can perform the same service 
for less concrete terms, with not so much precision, but 
greater profit. 

What does one mean, for example, by broadmindedness } 
Clearly some form of "improvement of the mind'' — and 
that is the genus to which the term belongs. But what 
does one mean by ^ro^i;?mindedness } How does it differ 
from deepmindedness, from keenmindedness, from dis- 
ciplining, from informing the mind ? What are its dif- 
ferentia ? A dozen questions must be answered before one 
can define the term ; and until they are answered the pro- 
posed essay will not be worth the time it takes to write it. 
Does breadth of thinking consist of knowing a little of every- 
thing, or a few fundamental things well 1 Or perhaps it is no 
matter of knowledge at all, but rather the way one thinks 1 
Is broadmindedness a quality that belongs to character 
quite as much as to intellect ? Or does it come from the 
reaction of tolerant, intelligent thinking upon character? 
So much is merely a beginning toward a definition of breadth 
of mind. And now, what is meant by a " college course " ? 
Any higher educational process, such as that of a technical 
or professional school ? Or a strictly undergraduate train- 
ing in what are called the liberal arts } All these questions 
must be satisfied and the subject exactly defined before one 
is ready to go ahead with the development of the thought. 
Otherwise, one gets not real development, but muddle — 
and we do get muddle in a disgracefully large proportion 
of the so-called thought developments inflicted upon a 
patient but none too clear-headed public. Definition, in 



38 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the sense used above, is a very necessary part of prepared- 
ness in writing. 

This is one step. Another immediately suggests itself. 
By what end are you to grasp this ticklish subject of broad- 
mindedness, once you know just what it means ? Where 
does one begin to write, when, after due consideration, 
one discovers exactly what it is that he proposes to write 
about ? If every subject were as simple and indivisible 
as the familiar proposition in logic, "All men are mortal," 
there would be no more to do than to define mortal and let 
it go at that. But even the simplest subject is ordinarily 
divisible. The child who writes on "My Dog" begins with 
dog morality, he is a good dog ; continues with dog nomen- 
clature, his name is Bounce; and concludes with dog phy- 
sique, he is small and curly. The man is but a complex 
child, and a man's thought is but a complex child's thought. 
For easy reading both must be divided. 

The difficulty in division comes simply because the thought 
is complex. One laughs at the child's naive essay on the 
dog and then proceeds to commit one or both of the two 
cardinal sins of division, overlapping or incompleteness. 
For example, here is a discussion of the minimum wage 
law under the quadruple heading: "Effect on the laborer; 
effect on the employer ; effect upon capital invested ; effect 
upon the community." The writer never noted that his 
fourth item overlaps all the others, and as a result his essay 
is repetitive and confusing. And here is another upon scien- 
tific management, which is developed under the headings : 
"Increase in output; effect upon wages; effect upon profits." 
This writer did not observe that the possible effect of the 
"speeding up" of scientific management upon the human 
material employed has not been touched upon at all. He 
traveled through three arcs of the circle of his subject, 
but never entered upon the fourth. His topic was not 



THOUGHT 39 

thoroughly developed because his division was incom- 
plete. 

The method by which one divides any subject in advance 
into natural parts is so simple and so efficacious, that one 
wonders that it is so seldom done consciously. Most 
writers do it unconsciously — by instinct seemingly — when- 
ever they write. But so long as the process remains in- 
stinctive, unreasoned, uncontrolled, it may fail to work 
when most needed, or may, as above, work imperfectly. 
Think of the thought to be developed, or the group of 
thoughts to be explained, as a circle inclosing the subject 
matter. Divide the circle-subject into arcs, following the 
natural lines of cleavage. See that the divisions do not 
overlap. See that all the circle is divided. Then lift out 
the division that can best be handled first and begin. This 
advice is thoroughly conventional. One can find such 
directions in any book on logic. Indeed, they are so obvi- 
ous that most writers do not heed them — and as a result 
pay a price in time and effectiveness. 

Equally obvious but far less neglected is the next step 
in logical presentation. Specification, as it is commonly 
called, is really a rough kind of definition, which enlarges 
the meaning of the topic. When a subject has been stated, 
it is usually necessary to present the details, to elaborate 
it, to specify the circumstances that it involves. If it is 
a group of facts that is to be handled, one must describe 
them, turn them over, give the details, the specifications, 
until all that is implied by the subject is made plain. I 
am writing, for example, of the benefits of compulsory 
service in a democracy like the United States. After I 
have defined what I mean by compulsory service; after I 
have divided the subject into, let us say, objections and 
benefits ; why then I must specify the precise nature of 
each objection and each benefit; I must elaborate; I must 



40 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

give the details. This is specification, a somewhat loose 
process, but so natural that it needs no further discussion. 

It is not easy to develop a thought without division, defini- 
tion, and specification, but the fourth method of presenta- 
tion is not so generally applicable. Comparison and con- 
trast require on the part of the writer some imagination; 
they are adapted, furthermore, only to subjects where com- 
parison and contrast are really valuable. And comparison 
particularly is tricky, for there are more false analogies in 
the world than true ones. Nevertheless, the writer who 
can reach the mind of another by an apt comparison makes 
quick strides toward his goal. If the undergraduate can 
be made to see that when he measures service to his college 
entirely in terms of athletic prowess he is like the statesman 
who measures service to the state entirely in terms of ora- 
tory, conviction of a possible narrowness is much more 
likely to be brought home to him. Likewise, if I can set 
the initiative of the American pioneer, his inventiveness, 
his adaptability, in contrast to the inflexible mind, the 
timid spirit, the helplessness in crisis of the peasant in a 
despotic Oriental state, I have done much to explain the 
blessings of residence in a land still rich in new careers. 

Unfortunately, if the comparison is not accurate or the 
contrast unjust, this method of thought development is 
perhaps the worst. The war, for example, has spawned 
a multitude of false analogies that fill the daily press. It 
was effective to compare the defenseless United States to 
defenseless Belgium ; but the comparison left out of account 
a difference in geographical location so great as to destroy 
the analogy. In 1914, every move of the belligerent armies 
was explained by comparison with the war of 1 870-1 ; but 
by 191 5 that analogy was seen to be false. The Franco- 
Prussian war disappeared from military comment except 
as in contrast to current battles. An extraordinary amount 



THOUGHT 41 

of bad arguing comes from thinking that Tweedledum is 
just the same as Tweedledee. But an accurate use of 
parallels in explanation or persuasion makes strong, effective 
writing. 

Only one possible form of subject development remains, 
the use of reasoning. Reasoning is not quite the same as 
argument, although the two are usually confused. Any 
form of statement used to persuade becomes argument — 
whether a mere assertion of facts, or an analogy, or reasoning 
itself. Argument uses whatever weapon lies handiest, and 
— to revert to the conventional terms of rhetoric — at 
least half of all argument is pure exposition. 

Reasoning is the use of facts and thought in combination 
in order to reach a definite conclusion. If the methods 
employed are analyzed, it quickly becomes apparent that 
they fall invariably and necessarily under two heads. The 
thinker finds some general principle that he knows to be 
true, and fits into it the facts of his particular case. This 
is deduction. Or he begins with the facts ; that is, having 
a definite effect he may seek for a possible cause, or vice versa ; 
or having a sufficient number of observed facts, he may 
attempt to base upon them a general conclusion that will 
seem to be generally true. This — whether cause and effect 
reasoning, or generalization — is induction. He may use 
either deduction, or induction, or both ; but in a vast 
majority of cases writers and speakers use both in such close 
cooperation that only thought analysis can disentangle 
them. This is as it should be, for the purpose of reasoning 
is not to display rhetorical forms, but to use them so as to 
get a result. Indeed, it is far more important to decide 
whether this final conclusion is just than to separate the 
methods of development, although by analyzing arguments 
it is often possible to detect fallacies and to discover when an 
assertion is not supported by the facts. 



42 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

In thought development reasoning is often a last and 
necessary resort. For instance, even though in the essay- 
proposed above I may have defined compulsory service 
to the state, and may have listed the objections against it 
and the possible benefits, the nature of the question is still 
at best made clear and the answer is still doubtful. Re- 
mains the final effort of pure reason. Is it true as a general 
principle that democracy and universal service are compatible 
and mutually helpful ^ If so, it is easy to bring the special 
case of the United States under this law, and so take a step 
forward in the argument. This would be deduction. And 
again, can the reasoner present desired effects upon our 
social life of which compulsory service would be the only 
cause ? And does the available evidence as to what Ameri- 
cans have accomplished under discipline, and in public 
affairs, permit him to generalize, to say that compulsory 
service in the United States would work .? These two argu- 
ments — both the cause and effect and the generalization — 
would be induction, and further steps toward the conclusion 
he seeks. In practice he would not argue so simply. He 
would probably combine his methods, getting a general 
principle by induction and then using it to deduce. He 
would think, and rightly, much more of the proof desired 
than of the particular form of reasoning employed. But rea- 
son he would certainly have to use; and this is the fifth 
means of securing a complete and satisfactory development 
of thought.^ 

These five means of thought development sound fatally 
like a set of rules guaranteed to fit any subject and produce 
a perfect writer after fifteen minutes of memorizing. Noth- 
ing, unfortunately, could be further from the truth. To 

* For a more detailed discussion of the special problems of reasoning and 
argument see "English Composition in Theory and Practice," The Mac- 
millan Co., Chapters VIII and IX. 



THOUGHT 43 

understand them helps; to know that In any thought de- 
velopment, as in any presentation of facts, one or two or 
all of them must be used and that there are no others avail- 
able for direct presentation, also helps. But each in itself 
is really valuable only so far as the writer's thinking is clear 
and accurate, his grip upon fundamental facts sound and 
true. 

And again the real problem is not how to develop thought, 
but how to develop a thought. Some ideas need defining ; 
others do not. Sometimes the most intricate processes of 
reasoning are necessary; again a straightforward specifica- 
tion of what is known about the subject is sufficient; or 
a cogent analogy will serve to do the work. The brilliant 
idea that since war has its virtues as well as its defects, 
there may be found somewhere in the social realm a moral 
equivalent of warfare, was struck out from the mind of 
William James in his "Varieties of Religious Experience" 
some years before the essay included in this volume was 
written. "What we now need to discover," he wrote, is 
"something heroic that will speak to men as universally as 
war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual 
selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible." In 
the chapter on the value of saintliness of which this sentence 
is part, he had no room to develop the thought. Content- 
ing himself with a brief definition of the moral values of 
war, and specifying that discipline of voluntary poverty, 
which rriany a saint has practised, as a possible substitute, 
he passed on. But the idea worked in his mind, sought a 
development entirely apart from any arguments for or against 
saintly poverty, found it, and was expanded by new processes 
of reasoning into essay form. The other essays appended 
to these chapters will also illustrate the truth that every 
thought has its own best development. Practice with ex- 
panding ideas will quickly confirm it. 



44 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Practice in writing consists in getting ready to write, even 
more than in covering paper. As Hamlet says in a some- 
what more important connection, the readiness is all. And 
the best form of readiness for composition is a clearly grasped, 
clearly developed thought, whose outlines may be jotted 
down in the form of a plan. The first draft of an essay, or 
an article, or a report written from such a plan should be 
an experiment merely. When it is done, the incomplete- 
ness — the crookedness, the inadequacy of the thought 
development, if such defects exist — is rendered manifest. 
Then is the time for more and straighter thinking, for replan- 
ning and rewriting. Recopying merely is a waste of time; 
revision — a word that means reseeing, and thus implies 
rethinking — frequently turns a weak page into a strong 
one. 

Learning rules for writing is a disagreeable task, and 
sometimes an unprofitable one. But the attempt to turn 
a thought that really means something to the writer into a 
piece of writing that does its work, that touches the brain 
or reaches the will of the reader, is one of the major sports 
of the intellect. To speak of such endeavor as learning to 
write is much too narrow a statement. Learning to think 
and learning to know are heavily involved, as these chapters 
have indicated ; learning to utilize the imagination is also 
included, as will be made clear in the chapter to come. 



CHAPTER III 

IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 



In the preceding chapters much more has been said about 
matter than about manner. This is as it should be. Ac- 
curacy of fact, soundness and clearness of idea, are essen- 
tial to any writing that is to be more than momentarily 
amusing; the graces of presentation are valuable but sub- 
sidiary aids. Readers of our oldest and most respected 
periodicals know only too well how often articles make their 
way into print by brute force of the valuable material they 
contain. It is undeniable that a new and true idea or a 
fresh and significant observation of fact will usually win a 
hearing, let the presentation of it be ever so unattractive. 
On the other hand, the art of the jeu (T esprit, the cleverness 
that lends charm to the trifle, is not to be learned from 
books. 

Nevertheless, the ordinary man can ill afford to neglect 
anything that will help to attract a possible reader. The 
compiler of an engineer's report may be happily certain 
that his work will be inspected by some superior official; 
the student who composes a theme may be unhappily cer- 
tain that even his dullest production will receive the blue- 
pencilings of an instructor; but the great mass of writing 
must make its own way, must — if it is to succeed at all — 
gain and hold the attention of those who are free to refuse 
it. Such writing must be interesting or unread. 

45 



46 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Interest is often, of course, an inherent quality of the 
facts or ideas to be handled. An essay which presented 
a certain means for assuring permanent international peace 
could scarcely be made so dull that it would be wholly un- 
noticed. An article announcing the discovery of a cheap 
and satisfactory substitute for gasoline would be eagerly 
read even though it lacked every recognizable device for 
awakening interest. A keen appetite needs no sauce, and 
for a few things the public appetite is keen. But not every- 
one who finds himself impelled to write is the happy possessor 
of material which will of itself make this immediate and 
general appeal. The attraction of most ideas, like that of 
most women, is obscured by an unattractive or ill-designed 
dress. Not even Cleopatra despised the aid of silks and 
jewels, and for even the best thought there is a worse and 
better form. 

Now and then there appears a man with an inborn ability 
to present his ideas in the most interesting way possible, 
one who could give to the multiplication table the fascina- 
tion of romance. Others, in spite of all their pains, would 
be dull even if they were allowed to report the Day of Judg- 
ment. But nearly everyone who will force his imagination 
into the service of his thought can give his work an interest 
which it would otherwise lack; for, more than upon any- 
thing else, interest is dependent upon imagination. 

The word imagination may properly be used to denote 
the power of constructive thought which has been discussed 
in the preceding chapter. It may also mean, as here, the 
power that the mind has of picturing to itself the unseen, 
of translating the abstract into vivid, concrete terms. A 
psychologist might easily cavil at the attempt to differentiate 
sharply between thought and imagination ; but a man 
may think clearly about battles without once imagining 
the blood and filth of the trenches, the stench of the wounded, 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 47 

the continuous, maddening roar of artillery. The distinc- 
tion between these two mental processes is certainly a 
serviceable one, and when a man makes use of such mental 
pictures he may be said to put his imagination into the 
service of his thought. 

One way in which the imagination may thus be used ap- 
pears at once when the writer considers the desirability of 
conceiving the character of the audience which he is to ad- 
dress. A speaker, having his hearers before him, can easily 
adjust himself to them. He can discover from Mr. Brown's 
puckered brow that a supposed explanation does not explain, 
or from Mr. Smith's ill-concealed yawns that a less ample 
presentation of the subject would be more acceptable. The 
writer, though he lacks this ocular aid, must none the less 
adjust his manner to the wishes and capabilities of those 
to whom he would appeal. A dramatic criticism admirably 
suited to the pages of "The North American Review" 
might easily bore the readers of "Vanity Fair." For the 
one audience the critic might well stress the construction 
of the play ; for the other he would do better to remark on 
the construction of the players. 

Perhaps the chief reason why the majority of college 
themes are hopelessly dull is that their authors have in 
mind no specific type of reader. By addressing everyone 
in general the student fails to interest anyone in particular. 
At one moment he takes for granted too much knowledge ; 
at the next, too little. Here, as In every other kind of writ- 
ing, it is necessary to adapt both matter and form to the 
needs of some definite sort of person, some definite degree 
of intelligence. 

But to do this successfully the imagination must be 
employed. Only by summoning before the Inward eye the 
type of person whom he hopes to reach Is the writer able 
to decide wisely what he had best say and how he had best 



48 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

say it. The man who, as he writes, sees a pudgy commercial 
traveler in a stuffy smoking compartment is obviously 
more likely to say that which will awaken such a person's 
attention than he who merely shoots his words at random. 
Many a man who has prepared an article without conceiving 
the effect it would be likely to have upon any specific in- 
dividual has found to his cost that he has painfully squared 
a peg for the roundest possible hole. 

Moreover, the more vividly the imaginary audience is 
seen, the more personal and characteristic will be the utter- 
ance. With total strangers people are commonly stiff and 
repressed; with friends they reveal their actual selves. 
No one is willing to let himself go so long as he fears to be 
misunderstood. Similarly, no one will write freely, easily, 
and — in consequence — interestingly, unless he feels that 
he knows those by whom his words will be received. Com- 
pare on this score the letter that a lad visiting Paris for the 
first time writes to his brother with the letter the same lad 
writes when forced by his family to describe his experiences 
for some forlorn female cousin with whom he is scarcely 
acquainted. The one is usually fresh, entertaining, attrac- 
tive even to a person who has long been familiar with the 
scenes described ; the other is likely to resemble an excep- 
tionally bad guidebook. The reason is simply that the 
former conveys an impression not only of the city, but also 
of the writer — that the charm of the one is inextricably 
mingled with the charm of the other — in short, that the 
letter written to the intimate friend has personality. And 
in all work that is not wholly scientific or technical the free 
expression of personality counts for much. If Stevenson's 
essays are read to-day when those of other contributors to 
"The Cornhill Magazine" are forgotten, it is not because 
Stevenson was so much wiser than they, but because he 
knew better how to make his work an expression of himself. 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 49 

The most interesting essayist is usually, moreover, not 
only one who expresses himself individually, to a concrete 
audience, but also one who sees his subject concretely. 
Just as our interest in mankind is inevitably less vivid than 
our interest in Tom or Dick or Mary, so an abstract proposi- 
tion rarely grips us as does a concrete instance. A man who 
is very mildly enthusiastic about the maintenance of na- 
tional honor will forget his pacifism and clamor for a gun 
if an injury to his missionary sister is unavenged by Wash- 
ington. The best theoretical defense of a protective tariff 
has won a single vote for the Republican party where the 
alleged relation between such a tariff and the full dinner 
pail has won tens of thousands. 

The skilful writer seizes upon this psychological fact and 
uses it for all it is worth. Take for instance a paragraph 
by G. K. Chesterton in which he is discussing the supposed 
"need for * scientific conditions' in connection with alleged 
spiritual phenomena." Instead of putting his point ab- 
stractly he makes it as follows : "The fact that ghosts prefer 
darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the 
fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of 
love. If you choose to say, * I will believe that Miss Brown 
called her fiance a periwinkle or any other endearing term, 
if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,' 
then I shall reply, *Very well, if those are your conditions, 
you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say 
it.' It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be 
surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain ex- 
traordinary sympathies do not arise." A Freshman, writ- 
ing on Thomas Hardy's point of view, brightened a dull and 
commonplace theme by remarking that " Hardy is the kind 
of man who believes that if you drop a piece of bread and 
butter it will always fall buttered side down." 

The value of concrete illustration as a means of develop- 



50 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

ing an idea clearly has already been pointed out in the 
preceding chapter. It is necessary to recur to it again 
partly because it is one of the most effective means of gain- 
ing interest, and partly because one's success in hitting upon 
or devising such illustration is generally directly dependent 
upon one's success in putting the imagination to work. 

Of course, when a principle or a theory is the result of 
a direct induction from facts — as, for example, in an ac- 
count of scientific investigation — it is easy enough to re- 
verse the process and instance the facts as illustrations of 
the theory. More often, however, the affair is not thus 
simple. A writer starts with a theory about some general 
topic, such as the unifying force of war upon a nation. It 
is only as he makes himself see the effects of war upon definite 
sorts of people, upon the reformer and the office-seeker, 
upon a Mr. Rockefeller and a Mr. Gompers ; it is only as he 
brings his imagination to bear, that vivid, specific illustra- 
tions flash into his mind. 

Even more is this the case when the illustrations are 
drawn, not merely from the field under discussion, but from 
other, often widely different fields. It is not by chance that 
the poet more often than the writer of prose illustrates his 
idea by comparison, by the use of metaphors and similes. It 
is because the imagination of the poet is more often actively 
at work. But only the prose writer who is content to be 
uniformly dull can afford to despise the aid of such com- 
parisons. The border line between them and the concrete 
instance is not always easy to draw; the distinction is in 
any case immaterial. The only important question is 
whether the illustration is or is not of real service. When 
Chesterton characterizes a certain type of man by saying 
that he was born, not with a silver spoon in his mouth, but 
with a silver knife in his mouth, he not only produces an 
effect an unimaginative writer could not produce, but he 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 51 

produces it much more economically. A single sentence of 
this sort can do more oftentimes than a page of abstract 
discussion. 

A good figure, then, is no mere adornment, no piece of 
merely feminine finery. But a figure introduced only be- 
cause figures are supposed to "improve the style" is not a 
good figure. If we are weary of reading about ruby lips 
and pearly teeth, it is not simply because these are hack- 
neyed metaphors ; it is rather because they are the counter- 
feits of imagination — wretched and conventional substi- 
tutes for the real thing. They suggest no clear and fresh 
vision of a beautiful face ; they indicate only the lazy bor- 
rowing of an empty phrase. 

Such figures as these are scarcely figures at all. When 
one reads them he has no momentary vision of the cloudy 
pallor of pearls nor of the gorgeous radiance of rubies. 
Thus used, ruby and pearly are merely outworn adjectives. 
But a single adjective may display as much imaginative 
power as an elaborate comparison. When the domestic 
arrangements of an English household are described as 
being — from an American point of view — " sketchy, " 
we get a real figure, the apt suggestion of which grows upon 
reflection. Imagination can suggest the vivid word as 
well as the vivid phrase. By its aid one realizes the power 
latent in some words and lacking in others. Nine times out 
of ten good diction is imaginative diction. 

Even in connection with the best illustrations, however, 
two dangers present themselves. The first is that by their 
abundance and interest they may distract the reader from 
the point really at issue. He may become so fascinated by 
the illustrations as to forget what it is they illustrate. Any 
good teacher who has inspected his pupil's notebooks has 
more than once found recorded there only these sparks 
thrown off from the central flame, these fringes of his thought, 



52 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

with no trace of the main point from which they depended. 
More than one essayist has been considered a shallow thinker 
only because the blaze of his fireworks has been too dazzling. 
It is always possible to lose the forest in the trees. 

This danger is scarcely one to terrify the average writer. 
Few imaginations are thus active. A much more common 
tendency is that which uses an illustration as an ineffective 
substitute for proof.^ A comparison is seldom so perfect 
that it can replace logical reasoning. A specific instance 
almost never makes an impression so profound as to beguile 
a thoughtful reader into forgetting that it is only a single 
instance, and that a sound generalization demands more than 
one case for its support. Mathematical demonstrations 
are to many people dull, but they are conclusive to a degree 
that nothing else is. Most sentences devoted to gaining 
or holding interest replace others that might be devoted 
to gaining assent. The best illustrations serve both pur- 
poses, but they can nevertheless be overworked. The 
course between dullness and soundness is a narrow and diffi- 
cult one, but the successful writer must and does keep clear 
of either rock. 

II 

Such uses of the imagination as those just discussed are 
everyday affairs ; they appear in most good writing, in most 
good talk. Consciously or unconsciously any competent 
writer adjusts his material to his audience and presents 
it with reasonable concreteness. But the possible service 
of the imagination is by no means limited to such matters 
of detail. In other ways, more frequently available than 
an inexperienced writer suspects, the imagination may be 

* Analogy has evidential value, as has been shown In the preceding chap- 
ter. To overwork analogy, however. Is not to make Imagination serve 
thought, but to let It replace a more forceful means to the desired end. 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 53 

used to arouse and compel a reader's attention. It is often 
of the greatest value when it determines the form in which 
ideas or facts are presented. 

Anyone opening a magazine or weekly periodical is 
likely to find himself immediately confronted by the figure 
of a forceful-looking man who points his finger at the reader 
and says: "Now listen! I'm Slippery Jim, and I know 
more about making good pipe tobacco than anyone else. 
I've been making smooth-cut for forty years, and I can prom- 
ise you" — and so on. One knows that this is an advertise- 
ment, that Slippery Jim is a wholly mythical person, yet 
one can scarcely avoid reading what Jim has to say, whereas 
an impersonal exposition of the merits of the article in ques- 
tion, however carefully phrased, would be passed over with 
scarcely a glance. The advertising managers who devise 
such traps for the public attention know very well what 
they are about. They know that the average human being 
is much more influenced by persons than by ideas, that he 
is much more easily interested in the opinions of John Jones 
than in the greatest abstract thought. Hence they create 
an imaginary character and put into his mouth what they 
have to say. 

Such advertisements are new applications of an old method 
of the essayist. If, in the days of Queen Anne, the "Tatler" 
or the "Spectator" was to be found on every breakfast 
table, it was due in no small measure to the fact that the 
editors of these periodicals created such figures as those of 
Isaac Bickerstaff and Sir Roger de Coverley, into whose 
mouths they put their opinions. By means of such imagi- 
nary personages they could present subjects from various 
points of view, in various manners, and give to their thought 
a life and interest hardly attainable otherwise. 

The essayist, of course, has one difficulty not felt by the 
advertiser. The latter calls in the aid of an artist to give 



54 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

reality to the fictitious character. The essayist must do 
this unaided. He has not only to maintain the consistency 
of his character, to put into his mouth only such words and 
opinions as might naturally be expected there; he has 
also to add such strokes as will suggest a real and attractive 
personality. Unlike the novelist, the essayist cannot de- 
pend upon incident or action for revelation of character; 
unlike the dramatist, he has no assistance from living actors. 
Nor can he safely delay his points too long by pausing to 
give an elaborate character-sketch. If he is skilful he will 
gain his effect by a few suggestive strokes such as those of 
Charles Lamb's essay entitled "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on 
Whist": "*A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of 
the game.' This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah 
Battle (now with God) who, next to her devotions, loved 
a good game at whist." In a sentence or two this old lady, 
"who was none of your lukewarm gamesters . . . who 
affirm that they have no pleasure in winning," is made a real 
personality about whose opinions one is eager to know. 

Lamb employed an extremely effective variant on this 
method in his essay "Dream Children," where he speaks 
at first in the character of a widowed father and then later 
reveals himself as the bachelor who is writing only of the 
might-have-been. Thus the fictitious character may be 
used for only a part of the essay, possibly as an opponent 
or defender of the ideas to be conveyed. 

From the single figure to the group, from the monologue 
to the dialogue or conversation, is an easy step. When 
Mr. Lowes Dickinson wished to discuss various points of 
view toward English social and political conditions, he cast 
his essay in the form of a series of speeches made by men of 
strongly contrasted types, and by naming the result "A 
Modern Symposium" called attention to the fact that he 
was using a device as old as the Socratic dialogues recorded 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 55 

or imagined by Plato. As we read in Mr. Dickinson's 
pages that when the preceding speaker had concluded, "Mac- 
Carthy, without waiting my summons, had leapt to his 
feet and burst into an impassioned harangue ... his 
Irish accent contrasting pleasantly with that of the last 
speaker," we are already much more eager to know what 
this anarchist has to say against the socialist point of view 
than we could possibly have been had the two positions 
been presented directly and impersonally by the author 
himself. 

The fact that the use of the monologue and dialogue as' 
means of conveying thought has been illustrated by the 
work of distinguished ^ essayists in no way implies that 
such devices are valuable only to those who have literary 
ambitions. As a matter of fact, many a reasonably truthful 
person when compelled to give a disagreeable bit of advice 
has coated the pill by beginning, *'Well, a chap I once knew 
got himself into a peck of trouble that way. He thought — " 
and so on. The fact that such an unfortunate never existed 
does not in the least reduce his value as a means of adminis- 
tering opinions otherwise unpalatable. From an ethical 
point of view one may possibly object to such a practice, 
but its utility is attested by its common use. In writing, 
moreover, the question of actual deception rarely arises. 
Criticisms, suggestions, opinions — whether they have to 
do with local conditions and activities or any of a thousand 
subjects — may often be put with advantage into some one 
of these personal forms. Which one is best applicable to 
the individual case is a question easily determined ; the possi- 
bility of using some such form is always worth considering. 

So long as a writer merely enlivens what he has to say and 
intensifies its interest by putting his thought into the mouths 
of personalities not his own he remains an essayist, primarily 
concerned with the clear and forceful exposition of his ideas ; 



56 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the depiction of character remains a subordinate detail. 
But when he goes one step further and attempts to make 
use of characters in action, he gets into the field of the 
story or the play and is confronted with quite different condi- 
tions. 

Ill 

The attempt to convey a thought by means of some form 
of narrative is one of the commonest efforts at expression. 
The giver of disagreeable advice referred to a few paragraphs 
back is even more likely to tell a story about his imaginary 
instance than simply to report his opinions. Not only 
the teacher and the preacher, but also the man talking to 
you across the table is likely at any moment to say, "Now 
I can tell you a story that will show you what I mean." 

In a sense any story that does more than merely thrill 
or amuse the reader has back of it a similar purpose, the 
effort to convey effectively some kind of idea. Any writer 
of fiction who takes his work at all seriously is attempting 
to record his impression of life, the way in which he believes 
men or women react to one impulse or another. The author 
may not consciously have formulated any conclusions from 
the incident he relates ; he may not wish to ; he might even 
be unable to do so if he tried ; but the very fact that he has 
written as he has implies that he would answer, Yes, to the 
perennial questions. Is this true to life ? Do people really 
act in this way? Although Kipling, in his story "Without 
Benefit of Clergy," did not intend to propose or prove any 
thesis about the relations of Englishmen in the Civil Service 
with Indian women, although it would probably be unfair 
to say that the story illustrates any definite theory about 
such relations, nevertheless Kipling believed that he had 
something to tell about such conditions or he would never 
have written the story. 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 57 

It is a natural corollary that the writer of any story which 
pretends to tell the truth about life needs to test the accuracy 
of his observations and conclusions just as much as does the 
author of any essay or report; and similarly the reader 
owes the writer such careful attention as is necessary to dis- 
cover exactly what impression the story is intended to con- 
vey. To ask whether the author has really conveyed any 
true and fresh impression at all is a test which will speedily 
disclose the triviality and often the worthlessness of a vast 
multitude of the stories printed in the cheap popular maga- 
zines and in some of the more pretentious ones as well. It is 
by no means the only touchstone of judgment, but It will 
usually serve to show whether or not a story Is anything 
more than a means of whiling away an otherwise emptier 
hour. 

It is, however, with a much more limited and commonly 
inferior variety of story that we are specially concerned 
here, with the story that is the embodiment of a defi- 
nite idea, with what is often called the thesis-story. This 
idea may be of a very simple sort — an idea, for instance, 
about some historical person — or it may be of a very wide 
scope, a theory about the marriage relation or about religion 
or about the treatment of labor by capital. Stevenson's 
story "A Lodging for the Night" is an example of the first 
sort. Some time before he wrote it Stevenson had pub- 
lished an essay about Frangois Villon the title of which 
described this great rogue and great author as "Poet, 
Student, and Housebreaker." A comparison of the story 
with the essay shows that in the former Stevenson embodied 
in concrete incidents exactly the conception of the poet's 
character that he had set forth in the latter. In writing 
the story he drew upon his imagination for such situations 
as would make the reader feel the traits which he had at- 
tributed to Villon in the essay. Consequently the reader 



58 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

may properly ask about it as well as about the essay whether 
the author's representation of Villon is historically correct. 
In this particular instance, however, the story is so vivid 
and true to the type of life depicted that it has a value quite 
independent of its truth to fact in the specific case. 

Where a story embodies a general thesis, on the other 
hand, the author cannot escape so easily. The primary 
reason for the general contempt in which "Sunday-school 
books" are held is that the theories of life which they con- 
vey are not true. Very few people are able to take seriously 
the belief that little boys who tie tin cans to the tails of unfor- 
tunate dogs, or who smoke surreptitious cigarettes behind 
the barn, inevitably end in prison or some other undesirable 
place. Nor can the model infant who is always neat and 
clean and who never plays truant always be certain that he 
will ultimately be the heir of a rich uncle who will be kind 
enough to die at the most convenient moment. No graces 
of style, no mastery of construction could save such stories ; 
for the ideas which they embody are silly and false. The 
man who starts out to embody an idea in a story must first 
catch an idea that is worth embodying. 

This statement is one with which everybody will agree 
theoretically ; indeed — like several other points to be made 
in this section — it is so obvious that it might seem to need 
no discussion. Nevertheless, the majority of those who try 
unsuccessfully to present their ideas in narrative form look 
for the fault in the wrong place. They attribute their failure 
to some mysterious flaw in their "English," when the real 
difficulty is that their thought is either utterly common- 
place or untrue. Nor is the truth of this point a matter 
which concerns only the professional author. As a matter 
of fact, many a story is the more salable because it lies about 
life. Its popularity is often due largely to the fact that it 
represents what people would like to believe rather than 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 59 

what they do believe. But such success is failure for the 
man who is really trying to convey an idea. He must make 
his audience feel that his story represents what they ought 
to believe. 

The problem we are considering, then, is certainly not 
exclusively or even primarily that of the professional author 
nor that of the student who wishes only to write something 
which will appease an instructor who demands a story. It 
is that of any man who desires to make any other person 
see some point as he sees it and to utilize for this purpose 
the fact that most people are much more readily interested 
in narrative than in the direct presentation of ideas. That 
certain of our weekly and monthly periodicals are more 
and more employing this means of influencing public opinion 
is good evidence of its value, evidence of interest to others 
than the makers of magazines ; for, on the one hand, that 
which works in magazines will work equally well with the 
smaller audience of college, society, business, politics, with 
which the ordinary man is concerned ; and, on the other 
hand, the man who reads or hears such stories needs to be 
able to read them or hear them intelligently so that they 
will have only the influence they deserve. 

It is by no means the purpose of this section to give a 
series of directions supposed to enable anyone to write a 
successful story. Such directions are about as valuable as 
a set of precepts on how to choose a wife. The good results 
of advice in either case are commonly negative rather than 
positive. Besides, the technique of story writing is a sub- 
ject which cannot profitably be discussed in a paragraph 
or two. It is possible, therefore, only to suggest some 
general principles of use to one attempting to convey his 
ideas by means of narrative, and also, perhaps, to the reader 
of stories who has thought of them only as a variety of enter- 
tainment. 



6o FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

The man who puts narrative into the service of thought 
must not only have a real thought, but must also embody- 
that thought in a plausible situation. It goes without say- 
ing that no one will be convinced of the truth of a general 
proposition by a highly improbable case or one which is 
plainly an exceptional one. It is quite true that the United 
States should have a more adequate army and navy, but 
very few sensible people would be convinced of this by a 
story which represented any foreign power as landing on 
our shores within a month an army of a million men fully 
equipped with horses, motors, ammunition, and big guns. 

On the other hand, the more the incidents of a story can 
be made to seem at once plausible and typical, the greater 
its effect as a means for propagating ideas is likely to be. 
One of the main reasons why "Uncle Tom's Cabin" influ- 
enced the minds of large numbers of people was that Mrs. 
Stowe made her readers feel that the misfortunes of Liza 
and Uncle Tom were of a sort likely to occur to thousands 
of slaves under conditions then existing. If these misfor- 
tunes had seemed merely those of two individuals, one might 
have felt regret and let the matter drop there; but, being 
typical, they aroused widespread hostility to the system that 
made them possible. 

This particular book is an admirable illustration of a 
point which must not be overlooked. The popular success 
of a story as a means for presenting an idea is not necessarily 
an indication of real value in the idea or in the story. If 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not now commonly considered to 
be a great novel, it is largely because the situations and char- 
acters are neither true to life in general nor fairly typical 
of conditions existing in the South of 1850. The fact re- 
mains, however, that they were plausible enough to seem 
true to many people at the time, and hence to convey Mrs. 
Stowe's ideas about slavery. They served their purpose, 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 6 1 

but one may now smile at the author's reported remark that 
"God wrote the book." 

Another point often disregarded is that the incidents 
chosen for the story should properly be such that they will 
in themselves carry the author's meaning. Dozens of sto- 
ries and plays have failed because in them the imaginative 
conception of the theme was only partially complete. It 
is not enough that the author should imagine a group of 
people to whom something happens which he can make the 
text of a discourse, or who for one reason or another get 
together and discuss at length the problem in which the 
author is interested. It may occasionally happen, as in 
the case of Bernard Shaw's plays, that the author's ideas 
are so interesting or the expression of them so brilliant that 
they will hold the attention of the reader or playgoer with- 
out further aid. But the success in that case is not that 
of the narrative but that of the discussion ;] the ideas carry 
the story rather than the story the ideas. Besides, there 
are few Shaws, and it is safe to say that the effect of the 
average story or play intended to convey an idea is in inverse 
ratio to the amount of abstract discussion of the theme. 
In plays like "A Doll's House" or "Justice" the incidents 
and characters speak for themselves and make their impres- 
sion unaided. Nora and Falder are no mere mouthpieces 
for Ibsen and Galsworthy. What they say is not merely 
what the author's purpose demands, but what such people 
would say under such conditions. 

Finally, it is not enough that the story shall really embody 
the author's idea ; it must also be interesting in itself. It 
is not enough for a man to say to himself, " It makes me sore 
to see the way a man is misjudged on the basis of one charac- 
teristic. I'll make a story about a chap who really likes 
people and the place he's in, but who is a failure socially 
and gets himself hated as a knocker because he never hesi- 



62 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

tates to speak out when he thinks something is wrong or 
going to hurt the place." Unless the writer devises a really- 
interesting series of incidents which will arouse the reader's 
sympathy, he loses the persuasive power of direct argument 
without gaining anything in return. For it is clearly true 
that an idea embodied in fiction is less intellectually con- 
vincing than one supported by a mass of cold facts. If the 
imaginative treatment does not arouse interest, it is useless. 
One of our successful playwrights remarked not long ago 
that he had for years wanted to write a play dealing with 
woman suffrage. When asked why he had not done so, 
he rephed, "I can't hit upon an interesting story that will 
really carry my ideas. I must have that first of all." 

IV 

To the experienced author of short stories or novels or 
plays such a lumping of them together as is to be found in 
the preceding section would seem confusing. To him the 
differences between these various literary forms are often 
more apparent than their likeness as imaginative vehicles 
of ideas. And certainly these differences are not to be 
ignored. Stuff that would make a good novel might make 
an uncommonly bad play, and vice versa. An idea which 
can be clearly and effectively conveyed by a single scene 
will look excessively thin if it is stretched over four acts 
or four hundred pages. Such a study of the effect of envi- 
ronment on character as appears in Hardy's "The Return of 
the Native" could scarcely be transferred to the stage. 

But to discuss adequately what form is best suited to a 
given idea would lead us far afield. To attempt the task 
would be to fall short of any save the vaguest of conclu- 
sions ; for the choice between dramatic and narrative form 
is not infrequently determined solely by the writer's turn 
of mind. And such a discussion would inevitably raise 



IMAGINATION IN THE SERVICE OF THOUGHT 63 

technical problems of construction which are outside the 
scope of this book. 

All that has been said in the preceding sections applies, 
however, as well to one form as to another, to the simple 
narrative or the one act play, as well as to the novel in three 
volumes or the dramatic trilogy. Suppose, for instance, 
a man bitterly opposed to capital punishment who deter- 
mines to win sympathy for his point of view by presenting 
it in an imaginative form. He needs first to ask himself 
very seriously whether or not his idea is really sound. Sup- 
pose he determines to awaken interest in his thought by 
means of a concrete example of the wrong capital punish- 
ment may work. After casting about for such an example 
he finally plans to tell of a traveling salesman accused of 
murder, entrapped by the third degree into incriminating 
admissions, convicted, sentenced, executed, and too late 
proved innocent by the confession of the real criminal. Are 
these incidents plausible and typical ? Do they really em- 
body the idea ^ Will the narrative be of interest in itself ? 
Such questions the author must ask himself, whether he 
proposes to write a play or a story, whether he intends to 
treat his idea briefly or at length. If he is to write a really 
good story or a really good play, he must also solve, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, the peculiar technical problems 
imposed by the chosen medium ; but these general problems 
are raised in any case. 

Whatever the form decided upon, such use of the imagina- 
tion in the service of thought is not limited to the makers 
of great literature. It is not limited to the telling of tales, 
dramatic or otherwise. It means, in the widest sense, no 
more than to think and to express one's thought, not in 
terms of x and y, but in terms of John and Jenny — not 
merely in terms of The Duty of a Fraternity to a College, 
but also in terms of the duty of a particular fraternity to a 



64 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

particular college — something that requires neither genius 
nor any remarkable quality of mind. 

Forcing oneself to think thus concretely has a very practi- 
cal value. To do so is to get back through thought to the 
facts of life. Abstractions are often convenient, but they 
are also dangerous ; for they do not conform completely to 
the truth of things as we know them. It is convenient to 
talk about Man ; but what we really know is not Man, but 
men. We speak glibly of Nature acting in this way or 
that, but do we know whereof we speak } If there were 
less said about the College Student, a non-existent abstrac- 
tion, and more about the infinitely various individuals 
who actually go to college, we should be spared many dull 
and foolish words. If there were less thinking in terms of 
Labor and Capital and more in terms of such very human 
figures as Tom Poulos, who works in the smelter, and Stephen 
Forman, who owns it, the general interest in the questions 
involved would be greater and the answers to them nearer 
at hand. To put the imagination into the service of 
thought is to put it into the service of truth. 

Hence imagination, which may serve to awaken and re- 
tain the reader's interest, may also serve another and still 
more important purpose, that of making the thing written 
worthy the reader's assent. Writing that is interesting, 
that is powerful, that is true — in other words, the best 
writing — is the product of imagination as well as of facts 
and thought. Other factors may conceivably contribute 
to the desired result, but it is out of these three that good 
writing is essentially made. 



PART II 

ILLUSTRATIONS 
GROUP ONE 

(To ACCOMPANY CHAPTER I) 

HABIT FORMATION AND REFORMATION ^ 

Eliott Park Frost 

Recent experimental investigation has established much 
of the mechanism of our mental life. We are beginning to 
understand how our minds work. It once was thought that 
animals alone act from instinct, and that their behavior is 
therefore predictable ; but that man acts from a will directed 
by wisdom and reason, and behaves in ways unpredictable 
and free. This poetical distinction is on the highroad to 
oblivion. The more the psychologist studies the mind 
and the way it works in normal daily life, and the more the 
psychiatrist studies the mind and the way it works In the 
insane and abnormal, the more each is wholly convinced 
that the nervous system is a mechanism or machine : won- 
derful and complex, but none the less a machine. 

Now the significance of a machine is that it works Infal- 
libly : when energy of a certain sort is put into it, this energy 
is transformed Into energy of a different sort and the job 
to be accomplished is done. Throughout it is assumed that 
the amount of energy necessary to do the particular work 
can be calculated and regulated, and the machine and its 

* Reprinted from "The Yale Review " for October, 1914, by special per- 
mission of the editors. 

F 65 



66 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

product controlled. That the human body is this kind 
of machine every one now admits. It requires a certain 
amount of meat and bread and water to run it efficiently ; 
if it gets more or less than this amount its efficacy is di- 
minished. Among psychologists and nerve specialists pre- 
cisely the same attitude is taken towards the mind. Labora- 
tory investigations upon mental processes, animal and 
human, are indisputable. If you will allow me the same 
nice control of your nervous system that I have of my 
gasoline engine, I will guarantee to develop in you behavior 
as explicit in quantity and quality as I get from the engine. 

To a degree, I can already regulate the behavior of others. 
Practically, I know very well that if I offer a certain man 
five dollars he will come to work for me for a day. Prac- 
tically, I know that if I offer a certain other type of man 
twenty-five dollars he will steal, or set a fire, or do some 
other criminal act for me. Practically, I am sure that Mr. 
Brown, the wealthy banker, will probably do none of these 
things for any price. Practically, I know that if a group 
of people are herded together in a narrow building, and I 
cry "Fire!" there will be a panic, or that if I scatter gold 
coins in the street, I can in this way block traffic so long as 
the money lasts. I am as sure of these things, as sure that 
people in general will behave in these ways, as I am that 
a kitten will chase a rolling ball. I know that behavior is 
determined in the long run by factors that are as invariable 
as the tides of the sea. 

Not only can I thus naively anticipate the behavior of 
my fellow men, but from my individual experience and 
observation I can trace at once the causes of many of the 
variations in their demeanor and my own. What we eat 
and drink, the amount of sleep we get, the exercise we take, 
the people, things, and ideas that surround us, — these 
restrict and mould us in ways of living. We are a distinct 



ILLUSTRATIONS Gj 

person at 7 a.m. and quite another at 7 p.m. We seem dif- 
ferent, even to ourselves, as we till our gardens in old clothes 
and slouch hat, from that immaculate host who in the 
evening greets his guests at dinner. A touch of sea-sickness, 
and the man we were has shrivelled to the least possible 
denominator. 

No earlier than yesterday floods, famine, disease, pesti- 
lence, and insanity were regarded as evils common to the 
human lot. But to-day one has ceased to censure angry 
gods, and men are busy looking for dirt, and germs, and 
ignorance, and human greed to explain these things. Yet 
precisely the obsolete notion of our bodies and material con- 
ditions that once obtained, still obtains among laymen re- 
garding the mind. Too many men are still petitioning for 
powers that really lie resident within themselves — and 
they do not know it. 

Whether consciously or unconsciously, the business of 
life can be done only in obedience to nerve laws. To pray 
for strength to fight the devil, and at the same time to over- 
eat, under-sleep, to worry, to loll about in stuify rooms, to 
force the brain to action when the stomach is replete, to deny 
oneself the natural cathartics of play and recreation, — this 
is to disinfect the house against yellow fever and leave the 
windows open to the deadly mosquito and its poison. Just 
as knowledge of the plain facts of sanitation is saving lives 
and health of body to-day, so will knowledge of nerve laws 
save lives and health to-morrow. For our splendid nervous 
systems, complex as they are, work with the precision of 
fine-wrought mechanism. To comprehend this mechanism 
is in part to control it. Psychology and physiology are ex- 
plaining and describing in simple terms what heretofore has 
been thought mystical and supernatural. 

An experiment will illustrate the simplest act that our 
nerves can execute. Sit down and cross one leg over the 



68 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

other, then tap sharply just below the knee-cap of the sus- 
pended leg. The foot will give a sudden jerk. It has moved 
"reflexly" or "automatically." At the tap, a nervous 
impulse is released and travels at the rate of some four hun- 
dred feet per second up a so-called sensory nerve to the 
spinal cord. There, in the region of the small of the back, 
this nervous impulse passes over to another nerve, a motor 
nerve, and is reflected back to the muscle, causing the foot 
to jump. The jump seems instantaneous, but it is not. 
Time enough has elapsed for the trip of nervous energy up 
and back. If any obstruction be placed in the circuit the 
reflex jerk will not take place, however severely the knee 
be struck. 

The technical name for this path of nervous impulse is 
*' sensori-motor arc." Sensori-motor arc is a functional 
term ; it describes, not a structure, but a typical nervous act. 
The structure upon which it depends consists of three dis- 
tinct paths : a sensory or ingoing nerve, a central or con- 
necting nerve, and a motor or outgoing nerve. It thus acts 
like a telephone system : the message goes in to the switch- 
board, is at this central office transferred, and passes out 
finally over another wire to the distant friend, whether next 
door, or in another State, — in short as far as the wires may 
reach. In a human adult there are some eleven thousand 
million of these "wires" or nerve elements; but every act 
we perform, thought we think, or emotion we feel, makes 
use of this single principle of the sensori-motor arc : an 
ingoing, a central, and an outgoing nerve path. 

Another conspicuous illustration of primitive nervous 
action is found in the ordinary garden-worm. One cannot 
afford to scorn this humble creature. Not only does he 
beautifully display nerves in their elemental behavior, but, 
unlikely as it seems, he is an undoubted ancestral type of 
man, a few score of thousand of years removed. His ner- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 69 

vous system is very like the human nervous system, only 
simpler. If sometime after a heavy rain, when these worms 
are crawling about over the ground, one cuts the creature 
in two he- will find that while one portion squirms and 
writhes as if in pain, the other part (and this the head end), 
will crawl off unconcernedly, the loss of half its body ap- 
pearing as it were a most indifferent affair, quite beneath 
notice. The explanation for this curious behavior is that 
the nerves which connect the various longitudinal muscles 
of the worm conduct nervous impulses in one direction only, 
and that backwards. The head end of the worm is not 
informed that its tail is missing. When one goes fishing 
and finds that his worm resents being strung upon the hook, 
turning him end for end will have an extraordinarily sooth- 
ing effect. 

As in the worm, so also the impulses in our own sensori- 
motor arcs must go in a prescribed direction. Sensory 
nerves always carry impulses towards nerve centres (as for 
instance towards the spinal cord), while motor nerves always 
conduct impulses away from nerve centres towards muscles. 
Neither sensory nor motor nerves ever act in the reverse 
direction. The reason for this peculiarity of nerves will 
lead us into the heart of the problem of habit formation. 

But the worm has other characteristics that anticipate 
human behavior to an even more remarkable degree. In 
the first place, the worm is made up of segments, and each 
segment is much like every other segment. In man there 
are still traces of this old segmented structure, now only 
vestigial ruins of a vanished biological past. Already in 
the worm, however, the forward or head segment is dis- 
similar to the other segments — larger, for one thing, and 
containing more nervous tissue. Well, human heads with 
their big brains exhibit just this same unequally distributed 
nervous tissue still further developed; and developed, too. 



70 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

exactly where it was most needed, at the head end of man's 
ancestor; for one must remember that, geologically speak- 
ing, man has been walking upright for a comparatively few 
years only ; and in quadruped days, or still earlier when 
he crawled, this head was naturally the first part of him to 
come in contact with things. By no means is it therefore 
mere chance that most of the senses are grouped in the head. 
Ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and sensitive lips represent the 
front or business end of the body. As man's ancient rela- 
tive crawled towards and into his new environments, it was 
obviously necessary, if he was to live in a hostile world, that 
he should acquire an ability to sense the presence of food 
and water and good things generally, or to detect the pres- 
ence of enemies and trouble. And equally it was necessary 
that he should be able to send the information thus acquired 
to the segments following after; otherwise the head seg- 
ment, however keen its sense organs, might, while perceiving 
the danger in front, nevertheless be thrust willy-nilly into 
it by pressure from the uninformed segments following in 
the rear. The animal, in short, must be able not only to 
sense its world, but to act as a whole in response to these 
findings. This much ability the worm has ; and this much 
ability, in still primitive fashion, human centres possess auto- 
matically, independent of the brain. 

The nervous system is really then a long bundle of nerve 
fibres called a cord, spinal cord, with a big enlargement at 
one end, the brain ; and the whole system acts like a gigantic 
switch-board, ever translating incoming impulses from the 
outside world back again to muscles, and so finally into 
movements and behavior. The simplest of these impulses 
like that of the knee-jerk is translated at once and directly 
in the spinal cord, but the more complex impulses are sent 
up to the higher centres of the brain. 

The functions of the spinal cord are two in number. One 



ILLUSTRATIONS 71 

is to transfer a sensory impulse directly into a motor impulse, 
as in the knee-jerk, or in the instinctive withdrawal of the 
hand at the touch of a hot iron ; and the other is to carry 
to the brain those impulses which it cannot itself take care 
of, and to bring back therefrom the proper message to the 
muscles. This latter type of activity constitutes the con- 
scious or willed acts. 

All those movements performed by the spinal cord alone 
are unmodifiable by any conscious volition on the part of 
the individual. They are common to the species. All nor- 
mal human knees behave in just one way when tapped 
sharply. Only disease or grave impairment of the body will 
change this action. The nerve paths which such impulses 
use are formed before birth. If all habits were of this sort, 
the problem of habit reformation would be answered just 
here, and one could look upon himself as a helpless spectator 
of the processes of life. One cannot modify the simple 
reflex acts of the body. We cannot train our knees. 

Fortunately, most acts are controlled not by the spinal 
cord, or not by the spinal cord alone, but involve a greater 
circuit, namely the brain. It is in the possession of an 
extremely developed brain that man surpasses the lower 
animals. Many creatures have keener senses than has man. 
Dogs probably live in an atmosphere of odors that humans 
never sense at all. Some species of moths can scent a mate 
for three miles. Vultures can see their prey for twenty 
miles. But in ability to combine and use the data that the 
senses give, man has no equal. 

Yet brains are not only the great switch-board for myriads 
of nervous interconnections, allowing the combining of any 
one of thousands of incoming impressions with any one of 
thousands of motor channels, but they are also the seat of 
memory. That is, by their mechanism every impression that 
comes in is not alone sent out again in some fashion, but an 



72 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

account is kept of the transaction, so that a subsequent 
impression has a chance to be modified by the results of 
former favorable or unfavorable experiences. The old 
sensori-motor arc is nevertheless still in function. In the 
brain circuit there is as before, an ingoing path, sensory to 
the brain, and an outgoing path, motor from the brain. 
The significant difference is in the central path, the brain 
itself. This mass of central or connecting nervous tissue 
of so simple a sort in the spinal cord, is become in the brain 
very complex indeed, so that the entering impulse has no 
longer a predetermined path waiting to take it out to a 
predisposed muscle. Rather its exit is here determined by 
many factors. The problem of habit, in a word, is the 
problem of the control of these several factors. What 
information the senses impart depends in the large upon en- 
vironment. Any ability that man possesses is to reject or 
accept, to ignore or attend to these impressions. Each 
impression represents just so much chemical or physical 
energy that is bound to find outlet somewhere, somehow. 
Can one control these paths of exit so that the resultant 
movements and behavior shall be of one sort and not of 
another.? When the knee is hit the foot jumps. One is 
powerless to prevent it. When presented with a glass of 
beer, is one equally powerless to govern his action } Is the 
path "to take," or the path "not to take" a controllable 
one, and if so how is it to be controlled f Here is the nub 
of the problem of habit. If one can find out just what fac- 
tors specifically determine the taking or the rejecting of 
the beer, a long stride will be made towards solving the 
mechanism of habit control. 

To go back for a moment to the figure of the telephone. 
The message comes in over a single wire. At the central 
office connections can be made for any one of thousands of 
other wires, over which the message may go out. To the 



ILLUSTRATIONS 73 

casual onlooker it would be difficult if not impossible to 
predict in advance the connection that "central" will make. 
Nevertheless for each connection made, there is some ade- 
quate reason. For some cause or other, one combination is 
secured and all other possible connections are rejected. This 
done, the message goes out over its particular wire as me- 
chanically and fatally as it came in to the central office. The 
central office alone holds the reins of discretion, the reins 
of power. 

Now this exquisite function appears to be performed in 
human nervous systems by a microscopic mechanism found 
in every sensori-motor arc. Its discovery has been only 
recent. The name given it is "synapse." By synapse is 
meant the point of junction between ingoing and outgoing 
nerve fibres. To get from a sensory nerve to a motor nerve 
an impulse must cross a synapse, or switch-board, and its 
path may include an indefinite number of them. The 
synapse is the telephone central, and upon its action depends 
the fate of the impulse : whether it shall be allowed to pass 
out to muscle A or muscle B, — for instance, whether one 
shall take or shall refuse the proffered glass of beer. In this 
minute mechanism, then, the very issues of conscious life, 
and so of character, are determined. 

By a series of experimental investigations it has proved 
possible to expose the mechanics of this synapse or switch- 
board, to show how it works, and under what conditions its 
action can be modified. For the layman to comprehend 
these conditions, the sensori-motor arc or circuit must 
always be kept clearly in mind. In simplest terms there is 
an incoming impulse, — say, the sight of a glass of beer ; this 
impulse may be drained off through synapse a into one set 
of muscles, or it may be drained off through synapse h into 
another set of muscles. In one case the man takes the beer, 
in the other he refuses it. The nervous impulse will act 



74 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

precisely like an electric current, following the easiest path. 
The impulse, that is, will pass over that synapse that offers 
the least opposition. Of an habitual drinker one can then 
affirm that, other things being equal, the synapse at a offers 
the least resistance ; of a total abstainer, on the other hand, 
one can say that the synapse at a offers a resistance greater 
than the resistance at h. 

The general statement may now be made : the formation 
of habits is nothing more nor less than the breaking down 
of the natural resistance offered at one synapse, and the 
raising of resistance offered at another synapse ; and the re- 
formation of habits is the reversal of this process, where a 
synapse of great resistance is broken down, and a synapse 
previously weak is strengthened. In short, physiology has 
established the fact that the problems of habit formation 
and reformation find ultimate solution in the readjustments 
of synaptic resistances. 

The way has now been cleared to ask : how, then, are 
resistances at the synapses varied, so that at one time, or in 
a given nervous system, a certain path readily takes an 
impulse out, while at another time, or in another nervous 
system, that same path is blocked, and the impulse must 
seek exit elsewhere t Why does one man act foolishly, 
another man wisely ? Why at one time does one seem to 
be endowed with power to withstand a temptation, to which 
at a subsequent time he yields so easily ? The answer to 
this question can only be that there has occurred meantime a 
readjustment at respective synapses : paths that formerly 
offered austere resistance have been weakened to permit the 
passage of the impulse, and paths that were once broken 
down have now been built up, and thus check the ready pas- 
sage of the impulse. In popular phrase, the man has formed 
good or bad habits. 

Nerves are practically unfatigueable. One speaks of 



ILLUSTRATIONS 75 

"tired nerves" ; "nervous prostration" ; of being "nervously 
worn out." Nerves do not fatigue. These phrases are 
inaccurate. It is these switch-boards, these resistance-boxes, 
these synapses that become fatigued and prostrated. A 
nerve is perhaps the last portion of the human body to show 
wear. Muscle tissue breaks down at an alarming rate, 
but nerves exhibit extraordinary resiliency. After hours of 
continuous stimulation, provided it be not beyond the 
capacity of the particular tissues involved, nerves will show 
no appreciable effect. In this respect the nerve trunk is a 
conducting wire, neither more nor less. It appears to possess 
perpetual youth. In striking contrast to the almost literally 
unfatigueable nerves, the synapses very promptly show 
fatigue when successively stimulated. Their fatigue is in- 
stantly marked by an increase of resistance offered to any 
impulse, so that either the stimulant must be constantly 
increased or the resultant movement in the muscle will grow 
less and less. 

In the second place, it has been proved that in the nerve 
proper an impulse can pass in either direction, while on the 
contrary just so soon as a synapse is crossed the nervous 
process becomes irreversible. Synapses, that is, act like 
trap-doors, allowing nerve currents to pass in one direction 
only. Still again, experiment has established the fact that 
these "trap-doors" will not open when a weak impulse pre- 
sents itself, but will dam back the energy in such an impulse, 
resisting it until several such feeble currents have been 
summed together. This resistance is then broken down by 
the collective energies thereby accomplishing what one or 
two impulses alone could not do : that is, move the muscle. 
Finally, it has been made clear that these synapses exhibit 
the liveliest effects of toxic poisons carried in the blood, such 
as drugs, opiates, and anaesthetics, whereas the nerves proper 
are relatively immune to both stimulants and narcotics. ■ 



^6 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

There are, then, four remarkable peculiarities in the action 
of the synapse, demonstrable by experiment, that do not 
appear in the behavior of simple nerve fibres. In one word, 
it is in the action of the synapse only that the chief modifica- 
tions attributed to the nervous system, and so attributed to 
consciousness, find expression. 

All these discoveries have led to the astonishing conclu- 
sion that the seat of consciousness, at one time thought to 
be the pineal gland, is really, so far as one may speak of a 
"seat" at all, resident in the millions of synapses of the 
nervous system. Whatever one may say of the action of 
the synapse, may equally well be postulated of conscious- 
ness itself. For instance : the mental processes readily 
exhibit fatigue (one feels "mentally tired"); consciousness 
is irreversible (time always appears to go forward, never 
backward) ; consciousness is aware of minute stimuli only 
when they are summed together (as in the falling of rain- 
drops, or in the buzzing of insects) ; and finally, conscious- 
ness is promptly influenced and may be destroyed by drugs, 
alcohol, opiates, and the like (as in intoxication and anses- 
thetization). Modify the synapse and consciousness is 
changed. Vary synaptic resistance and one modifies, and 
may even reverse, behavior. 

From this somewhat technical explanation, three things 
regarding the action of a human nervous system will be 
apparent. First, the simplest type of action, such as the 
knee-jerk, is a predictable, unchangeable, mechanical pro- 
cess, that is accomplished by the lower centres, such as the 
spinal cord, without the interposition of consciousness. 
Second, consciousness and the various centres represented 
by the brain, have been evolved to give a greater flexibility 
to one's responses ; to enable the sensing of a wider horizon, 
and to adjust the organism more closely and more accurately 
to this more complex environment. Finally, all nervous 



ILLUSTRATIONS ^'J 

action Is controlled and modified only through synaptic 
action, and does not depend upon the nerves as such. If 
the synapses are single or simple as in primitive sensori- 
motor arcs, behavior is then simple and relatively predicta- 
ble. If the synapses are numerous and sensitive as in those 
great sensori-motor arcs that include the brain, then behavior 
becomes relatively unpredictable and complex, depending 
not merely upon the character of the stimulus, but upon the 
condition of the synapses : whether they be in normal health, 
and how previous experiences (impulses) have left them dis- 
posed. 

All this is physiology; in lowest terms this is the mech- 
anism of nerve action. Now what of psychology } One is 
presented for the first time with a glass of beer. If no 
habits for or against beer-drinking have been previously 
formed, one drinks for the first time. The result is per- 
haps unpleasant: the beer tastes "queer," or "bitter," or 
"nauseating." This result will tend to raise the resistance 
at that synapse which controls the extending of the arm, 
and in general the acquiescent synapses of the brain ; upon 
a second presentation, the beer may be rejected, and so on, 
until habits of abstinence have become fixed. Or social 
restraint may in like manner prevent a repetition of the 
drinking. If one considers it immoral, unwise, or as op- 
posed to the preferences of one's friends, these social rea- 
sons may sufficiently raise the resistance in given nerve 
channels so that the first beer-drinking will prove to be the 
last. In short, pleasant sensations — the cool draught on a 
hot day, the exhilaration, the gay companionship, — all tend 
to lower one chain of synapses, while unpleasant effects — 
displeasing taste, loss of social caste, pangs of conscience, — 
all tend to make another set of synapses become the point 
of least resistance. When these two tendencies balance 
each other, as often happens, little things will throw the 



78 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

victory to one side or the other. On the other hand, when 
one is an habitual drinker, or an habitual abstainer, resist- 
ance is so preponderatingly less in one nervous channel 
that there is no question of the result. The older the habit, 
the more predictable is behavior. 

If there be no contrary habit to combat, habit formation 
is relatively easy ; the only difficult feat being to perform 
the act the first time. Nervous systems are so constituted 
that, like garments, it is easier for them to stay in the same 
fold, than to take on new wrinkles, do new things. But so 
soon as a new thing becomes desirable, then, unless the first 
trial prove unpleasant, a habit may be established readily 
enough upon half a dozen trials. For instance, if I persuade 
you to try grape-fruit for the first time, the persuasion is 
necessary only because the experience is new : you have 
never tried grape-fruit before. But if upon taste it proves 
delectable, you find it agrees with your liver, and your doc- 
tor adds his recommendation, — if, in short, all the results of 
the first trial are favorable, thereafter you eat it without 
hesitancy, and the habit is already formed. Formation of 
habits of this sort offers no problem save that of initiation. 
There is an inertia to be overcome in making the first trial. 
This is the reason that venders and purveyors of foods, toilet 
articles, and general household minutiae are so generous with 
the "sample package." If you can be but once persuaded 
to overcome your natural hesitancy to attempt the novel, 
their battle is largely won, and thereafter you "fall into the 
habit" of consuming their particular breakfast food, or 
cosmetic, as though it were indeed "the best thing on the 
market." 

The difficulty lies in habit reformation. It is not only a 
question of breaking down a novel synapse, but there is now 
the greater question as to how that old path worn deep by 
many yieldings shall be dammed. The formation of a new 



ILLUSTRATIONS 79 

channel is useless just so long as the old path still offers 
weak resistance. The new path must be formed, but the old 
path must be blocked, and this is indeed a yeoman's task. 
To form habits of slow eating, of poise, or of pure-minded- 
ness, — to take three illustrations, — means just this : how 
can I break my habits of fast eating, of intemperance, of 
evil-mindedness .? And the problem is great precisely in 
terms of the fixity of the bad habit. Old age is notoriously 
hard to reform. A matured nervous system is a bundle of 
habits, a closed corporation. Its battles are memories only ; 
victory or defeat now lies permanently assured with one side 
or the other. Only some great mental or moral cataclysm 
can disturb the synapses that control the behavior of such a 
nervous system. Its demeanor has become predictable. 
The problem of habit reformation here is maximally great. 
Youth, on the contrary, is "golden" because habits are not 
yet hard and fast, and undesirable paths may still be blocked. 
This is the meaning of "opportunity," that habits may be 
established, and yet under favorable conditions be broken 
up, and newer, more worthy habits be substituted for them. 
Psychology as it comes to understand nerve laws is telling 
us how this can be done. 

In the first place, to bring about this result, all possible 
brain paths must conspire to facilitate action in this one path. 
The nervous system must be prepared to work as a unit. 
Psychologically this means that there must be a lively sense 
of the undesirableness of the present habit. In some way, 
one must be convinced of the inadvisability or evil of con- 
tinuing in his present course of action. Content never 
breeds reform, and no habit will be improved so long as its 
results are favorable. When it comes to be perceived as bad 
for the health, for social or business interests, as giving 
pain to one's friends, or as contrary to the moral standards 
and principles that one professes, only then is the soil fit for 



8o FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the new seed. Such realization is the first goal of education. 
With newer ideals comes the desire for better things. Divine 
discontent is the prerequisite for reformation. Even this 
primary task will be no sinecure, for half-hearted action will 
never succeed. 

Secondly, if the old path is to be closed, new paths must 
be provided to drain off the energy in suitable ways. This 
energy cannot be simply dammed up or thrown out of the 
system, but must be given a legitimate outlet. Some new 
habit, that is, must be initiated to replace the old. The old 
stimulants, whether from the environment or from appetite 
within, will always solicit, and one can neither avoid nor 
exclude them. One who tries to give up drinking will still 
have saloons to pass. The sight of each saloon, aided and 
abetted by cravings from within, releases energy and sends 
it to the centres as formerly. These impulses must be 
sublimated, that is, the energy they represent must be trans- 
formed into serviceable acts, lest, like loose energy of any 
sort, it wreck the machinery. It is the idle hands that the 
devil proverbially provides with work. To busy oneself with 
other things to do, is better than merely clenching the teeth. 

Next, since nerve paths vary greatly, and the nervous 
system is subject to moments of great depletion, fatigue, 
and ill-health, care should be taken that the initial effort 
comes at the most favorable time. The chief strain will 
come at first, and therefore this must be at the "psycho- 
logical moment" and the "psychological place"; a time 
when all favorably predisposing conditions are present. 
These secondary factors are of great importance. The lure 
of the saloon to the man, or of the cadet to the woman, 
comes with peculiar force at the end of the day, when fatigue 
sets in, resistances are hard to establish, and are easily 
broken down. Many a synapse battle has been won or lost 
by the lay of the land. Even artificial aids, such as choosing 



ILLUSTRATIONS 8 1 

the first day of the year, a birthday, or the signing of a pledge, 
or telling one's friends of the new resolution, help to set the 
stage with properties conducive to success. 

Moreover, we, as human beings, have the power to image 
to ourselves the results of acts in advance of their actual 
performance. Synapses may be modified, that is, not alone 
by the results of previous action, but by the images of such 
action. Not only the memory of a past calamity may raise 
the resistance in an old synapse and thus prevent a repetition 
of the behavior that caused it, but one may image possible 
results to himself, and thereby avoid pitfalls in the first 
place. In short, the knowledge of consequent penalty, 
clearly held in mind, acts mightily in favor of the desirable 
synapse. So the chief aim of all true penal institutions and 
jail sentences is not so much to punish the offender, but 
rather to deter the would-be criminal. For the philosopher, 
to see the goal may be sufficient incentive to lead to right 
action, but for the average man morality must be dramatized, 
and the consequences of evil be sharply contrasted with the 
beneficent results of rectitude. The arousal of fears of 
bodily consequences is the very best deterrent that can be 
presented to youth as a plea for morality. 

Now therefore, when all possible favorable conditions have 

been fulfilled, and the psychological moment arrives, the 

new impulse must be sent over its novel path "full-blown," 

the new activities strongly initiated, and the old paths closed 

forever. The old nerve path must be blocked once for all. 

Tapering off, the allowing of partial lapses. Is a mischievous \ 

method. If the flood once breaks down the new dike across > 

* 
the old synapse, succeeding waves of impulse will be so much 

the harder to check. No dam was ever mended by the pour- 
ing in of sand. To make an exception, with the reservation 
that to-morrow or next week control of the synapses will 
be surer and victory easier, is to invite final defeat. 

G 



'\ 



\ 



82 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

And last, though by no means of least importance, it 
should be borne in mind that human nervous systems are in 
process of constant metabolism : tissues are breaking down 
while new ones take their places ; night or day, week in, 
week out, change is incessant. Because a synapse does not 
yield to-day is no guarantee that it will not yield to-morrow. 
Fatigue may catch one unawares, and the dam that appears 
so firm may, in a moment of passion or excitement, be sud- 
denly loosed ; the old channels may once more claim their 
own. Beware, then, of idle moments when the mind is 
filled with casual thoughts and vigilance is relaxed. One 
cannot afford to think about the old habit even censoriously, 
for to think of not doing a thing, is after all to think about 
that thing, and the mere negative will, under some sudden 
stimulus, lose its restraining force. There is a well-known 
story of a physician, who, to test his hysterical patient, left 
her the extraordinary instructions: "Do not put beans in 
your nose." Certainly this idea had never entered her mind 
until that moment. But the more she brooded upon the 
prohibited act the more fascinating it became. Finally the 
suggestion worked, the negative instructions were over- 
powered or forgotten, and the physician, on his return, found 
his patient in fact doing that very thing : putting beans in 
her nose ! 

We know that consciousness is motor, that the things of 
which we think are bound to get into action unless prevented 
by some other action. If you close your eyes and simply 
think of the window at your right or the door upon your 
left, you will find that your eyes have turned with your 
thoughts, unconsciously. Any idea whatsoever held contin- 
uously and unchecked before the mind is as fatally bound 
to get into action, as is water, unrestrained, to seek its level. 
The reason why at this moment I do not commit the atro- 
cious crime of which I may be thinking, is solely because 



ILLUSTRATIONS 83 

other more powerful thoughts are restraining me. This is 
the psychology of all action. All acts are the direct result 
of ideas that, for the moment at least, are free and unchecked 
by contrary ideas. The safe rule is then in one's leisure 
moments to avoid thinking of the old habit at all, in any 
terms. Let bygones be bygones, and fill the mind with the 
new habit, with fresh ideas. 

Primarily the possession of a good physique, of a healthy 
nervous system, depends upon birth : the character of the 
stock from which one comes. This fixes the capacity, a limit 
that one can never exceed. With this material, good or bad, 
one must work. This is heredity. 

The character of the stimuli which surround one and 
solicit one's attention every hour, constitutes environment. 
In formative years of youth this environment, to a peculiar 
degree, makes a difference. Many a man knows well enough 
that he avoids evil only by avoiding its environment. Fewer, 
perhaps, realize that the finding of a new and more whole- 
some environment is part of the method of cure for unde- 
sirable habits. 

But beyond heredity, and beyond environment, are those 
factors that determine motives : the things that prod us to 
capacity effort, that set us against the current of mere cir- 
cumstance. These things are ideas, the stuff and substance 
of our knowledge, the results of the educative process. To 
realize the foolishness of evil, to understand the method of 
its avoidance, and to know how to substitute for its indul- 
gence a vigorous habit of healthful activity is, for all robust 
natures, already to will, and to achieve, good behavior. 



84 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

THE ODYSSEY OF THE SOCKEYE SALMON i 

By William Charles Scully 
I 

The fishing industry of British Columbia is of enormous 
importance. The aggregate value of the fish captured each 
year is over $14,000,000. Toward this the salmon — so- 
called — contributes about two- thirds, and of the firv^e species 
of fish classed locally as salmon, that known as the " sock- 
eye " is most numerous and economically the most valuable. 
However, it is not now proposed to deal either with the 
economic or the strictly scientific aspects of the sockeye, but 
rather to describe some of the known features of its remark- 
able life. These are of quite extraordinary interest.^ 

In a technical sense the five species of fish known as 
salmon on the Pacific Coast are not salmon at all — although 
more or less closely related to the Salmo genus. All five 
belong to the genus Oncorhyncus, the sockeye being known as 
0. nerka. The derivation of the term " sockeye " is obscure ; 
Dr. Jordan suggests that it may be derived from the word 
" sukie," by which this fish was known to a tribe of Indians 
which in old days inhabited parts of the southern section of 
what is now British Columbia. The sockeye is the smallest 
but one of the five species, its adult weight being about six 
pounds and its length averaging some twenty-four inches. 
It is lithe and graceful in form. While in the sea the back 

1 Reprinted from "The Atlantic Monthly "for August, 1916, by special 
permission of the editors. 

2 What is here set forth is based upon official reports of the careful and 
searching investigations as to the life-history of the sockeye, made by such 
men as Dr. C. H, Gilbert of Stanford University and Mr. J. P. Babcock, 
Assistant Commissioner of Fisheries for British Columbia, and upon such 
observations as the writer has been enabled to make. — The Author. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 85 

and upper portions of its sides are of dark, metallic blue; 
it is silvery-white beneath. When the fish enter the fresh 
water the colors dim ; later the back becomes suffused with 
a reddish hue. Throughout the journey to' the spawning- 
ground the sockeye never breaks its fast. And this journey 
(up the Yukon, for instance) may involve a swim for some 
fifteen hundred miles against a swift and turbulent current, 
the temperature of which is but little above freezing-point. 
The range of the sockeye is from Northern Alaska to the 
Columbia River. 

The beginnings of this creature's life are well known. 
From the embryonic stage to the end of approximately the 
first year of its existence as a free-swimming " fingerling " in 
one of those crystal-clear lakes with which the northwestern 
part of America is so richly dappled, the nature and habits 
of the sockeye have been carefully observed and studied. 
But in late spring or early summer the young fish disappear 
into " the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea '* — and of their 
life therein for upwards of two and a half years, there is 
literally no record. No sockeye between the fingerling and 
the adult stages has ever been captured. In early summer, 
just before the run inland, adult sockeye have been taken 
in purse-nets on the Swiftsure Bank, just outside the Strait 
of Juan de Fuca. Fragments of their meat, mixed with those 
of other fish, have been found in the stomachs of sea-lions 
killed farther north at the same season. The netted speci- 
mens revealed that the sockeye feeds upon a small crustacean 
and upon a form of Ammodytes, or sea-lance. But no sock- 
eye has ever been known to take a bait. 

The average four-years' life of this fish falls, therefore, 
into three periods, two of which are known and one unknown. 
This rule has exceptions. A few individuals, almost ex- 
clusively males, mature in three years and come in with the 
adult run. These are the so-called grilse. A few others 



86 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

remain for two years in the lake before migrating to the 
ocean. In the case of the Fraser River sockeye a curious 
fact has been observed — every fourth year an enormous 
run takes place. The last occurred in 1913. No such phe- 
nomenon has been observed in respect of the other spawning 
areas. 

II 

The approximate year having been spent in a fresh-water 
lake, the frail atom of a fish has grown to a length of from 
two to three inches. Some time between March and June, 
instinct prompts it to start on the perilous journey to the sea. 
This journey may take only a few uneventful days ; on the 
other hand, it may involve traveling a thousand miles to 
some misty fjord where a brown spate, flung by melted 
snow from the Rocky Mountains, clashes with a brimming 
tide at the full of the moon. The little creature — so soft 
of texture, with its large, soft, apprehensive eye — has to 
run the gauntlet of numerous enemies. It is flung down 
foaming, vertical cascades ; it is swept into shouting rapids 
combed by fang-like rocks. At the stream's mouth it is 
met by new dangers ; fresh and menacing problems are 
found at every turn. There is the sudden transition from 
fresh to salt water, involving chemical, dynamic, and respira- 
tory changes. There are fierce enemies, openly ravaging, 
and stealthy murderers with ingenious lures and devices 
in operation, lurking in every nook where shelter might be 
sought. Yet it miraculously adapts itself and survives, — 
to disappear from human ken in the mystery of the illimita- 
ble sea, — until it reappears, adult, some three-and-thirty 
months later. 

It is about midsummer — although the time varies slightly 
according to locality and individual season — when the sea 
gives up these mysterious denizens, the adult sockeye, which 



ILLUSTRATIONS 87 

entered it as fingerlings three seasons previously. From far 
and near the schools crowd in and assemble before those 
lone and misty gateways through which the Pacific rollers 
smoke and thunder. The southeast limit' of Vancouver 
Island is approximately four hundred miles from Prince 
Rupert, at the mouth of the Skeena River; but the inter- 
vening coast is much broken and indented — probably more 
so than that of any other with the exception of Norway. It 
is said that if the coast-line of every island, promontory, 
and indentation on the British Columbian coast were to be 
followed, a journey of twenty-seven thousand miles would 
be involved. This is irrespective of the immense and con- 
voluted expanse of the Alaskan coast, which also lies within 
the sockeye range. Practically every indentation on the 
coast north of the Columbia has its stream, and — here lies 
the greatest marvel — every stream suitable for spawning 
appears to have its separate frequenting pack. It has, in 
fact, been practically determined that the sockeye will spawn 
only where it has been spawned. 

After having digested their last meal — for at this period 
the stomach of the sockeye is invariably found to be empty 
— the fish leave the salt water and, entering the gates through 
which they emerged, make for their respective spawning- 
grounds. These lie on the shallow margins of lakes or, pre- 
ferably, on the margins of streams by which the lakes are 
fed. Enemies of many kinds beset the sockeye's course. 
North of smoky Quatsino Sound the predatory legions of 
sea-lions and hair-seals lie waiting for their easy harvest. 
Of the former there are believed to be over 11,000 within the 
compass of a small triangle north of Vancouver Island. A 
full-grown sea-lion weighs upwards of a ton. The havoc 
wrought by these creatures among the sockeye and other 
fish may thus be imagined. 

The European fishermen with varied scientific devices 



88 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

crowd the areas where the salmon assemble from the sea. It 
is computed that in the area including Georgia and Juan de 
Fuca Straits and Puget Sound, 33,000,000 salmon were 
taken from the sea in the 1913 season. All along the river- 
banks the Indians stand with their scoop-nets, lifting out 
fish at the rate of hundreds a day. Below each rocky bar 
over which the fish have to leap, the wearied wayfarers lie 
resting — gaining strength for the effort. If the obstacle 
to be surmounted should be one of those cascades whose 
course is over sharp rocks standing in foaming, swirling ed- 
dies through which contending currents are flung, a large 
number of fish may be injured, and in the pool below are 
assembled a sorry company of the halt and the maimed — 
many with their sides cruelly gashed. Every now and 
then one notes a gleam of silver on the surface — and a dead 
fish floats away downstream. Perhaps one of the gorged 
fish-eagles may swoop down and seize the carcass ; oftener 
it will be swept unregarded away. 

The number of salmon crowding Into a stream when the 
run is heavy is almost incredible; occasionally they lie so 
densely packed that it seems almost as though one could 
walk from bank to bank on the mass. In the big Fraser 
run of 191 3 many millions of fish were sacrificed owing to 
a landslide at Hell's Gate, near Yale. This narrowed the 
channel and increased the speed of the current to such an 
extent that the fish could not surmount it. They lingered, 
exhausted, for days below the rapid ; then they floated down- 
stream, died, and were borne as carrion toward the sea. 
Below Hell's Gate are good spawning-grounds, to be reached 
via the Harrison, Lilloet, and Pitt tributaries ; but rather 
than spawn at any other spot than that where they them- 
selves had been spawned, the fish forewent the great purpose 
of their lives. 

The evidence in favor of the view that the sockeye will 



ILLUSTRATIONS 89 

spawn only at their birthplace is overwhelming. Anderson 
and Nahmint lakes in Vancouver Island lie less than two 
miles apart. The vent-streams from both -run to Barkley 
Sound. Both lakes are fed from the same snow- and rain- 
fall ; both lie embowered in cedar, hemlock, and pine ; 
on both the same sky looks down between mountains of 
similar geology. Yet Dr. Gilbert will distinguish between 
a sockeye taken in Anderson Lake and one taken in Nah- 
mint. It may be by the shape or size of the scale, the form 
of a fin, the angle of the jaw, or, if the specimen be a female, 
by the size of the ovum. But the distinctive peculiarity 
will be there, and will be found constant in every specimen 
examined. It is quite possible that with a little further 
knowledge, it will be practicable to determine, not only the 
lake in which a given fish has spent the first year of its life, 
but the tributary streamlet on the gravel of which the ovum 
that gave it life was spawned. 

That this habit will in course of time give rise to different 
races, and eventually to different species, is a fair inference. 
That the process is now going on is clear from the circum- 
stance that already racial strains are arising. For instance, 
a sockeye of very large size has been found at Yes Bay in 
Southern Alaska. A number of eggs of this variety have 
been laid in a lake down in Vancouver Island and another 
in the State of Washington. All this involves an astound- 
ing proposition, but one which, on the evidence, we can- 
not avoid accepting. 

To what may we attribute this inevitable determination 
of the sockeye to return for the purpose of spawning — and 
then incontinently dying — at the spot where it was spawned ? 
Is it to a blind, compelling instinct void of conscious thought, 
such as characterizes so many of the marvelous operations 
of the honey bee ; or is it a passionate love on the part of 
the fish for its birthplace — an overwhelming desire to 



90 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

revisit and end its life in the beautiful spot where life and 
light first dawned upon it? For all the spots where the 
salmon spawn are beautiful. Is it perchance what Schopen- 
hauer, in connection with higher animals, termed " the genius 
of the genus " working through the mind of each individual, 
urging it to forge the link of continuance between the gen- 
erations in a perfect circle, ending where it began — spend- 
ing the strength it amassed amid the rich pastures of the ocean 
in striving for a goal which has been an ever-present dream ? 
The evidence is, one may think, in favor of an intellectual 
rather than an instinctive process. Place twenty bees in 
an uncorked bottle of clear glass, and set the bottle on its 
side with the closed end in sunlight and the open end in 
shadow. The bees will die of exhaustion after vain struggles 
to penetrate the glass, but they will never attempt to escape 
through the open vent. Their instinct is based on a long 
racial experience that light indicates an opening, and their 
intellect is incapable of leaving the rut thus formed. But if 
a salmon-run be obstructed, the fish will diligently and 
intelligently seek in every possible direction for a passage. 
Moreover, they will at once make use of a fish-ladder or other 
arrangement placed for their convenience. If, owing to 
heavy rain, a river becomes swollen, and a fall, passable at 
ordinary times, becomes impassable, the sockeye will wait 
patiently in the pool below until the spate has gone by, and 
then resume the interrupted journey. Among bees, so 
far as can be observed, individual preferences are unknown ; 
the individual is nothing; the dominant note of the bee's 
life is a passionate devotion to the commonwealth, mani- 
fested upon rigidly fixed lines. But the salmon have in- 
dividual preferences ; male and female mate together, and 
in their mating they exhibit jealousy and other character- 
istics which link them with the higher animals — and even 
with human beings. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 9I 

It must, one thinks, be a fixed idea — a memory-visualiza- 
tion which guides them. Do these creatures, throughout the 
course of their perhaps worldwide wanderings during nearly 
three mystery-shrouded years, dream of the little submerged 
cairn of purple gravel over which the crystal water lapped 
and murmured — that cairn among the interstices of which 
they found safe refuge from watchful, ravening foes, from 
the greedy trout and their own hungry kin of a previous 
generation ? Do they dream of the sombre, stately cedars 
growing from the edge of the stream ; of the rugged pines 
festooned with sage-green Usnea moss ; of the lace-like 
fronds of the hemlock and the swaying lingers of the maple ? 
These trees stand, dreaming, between the sky and the mur- 
muring water. Do the tired wanderers long for those fleet- 
ing glimpses of the folded hills, — perchance backed by 
sunlit, snowy peaks, — glimpses had when they sprang, 
playing, into the air at sunrise t Does the lure perhaps lie 
in the miraculous clearness of the peaceful water — a clear- 
ness so startling that its realization comes as a shock to the 
observer ? One cannot tell what it is, but the lure is there ; 
the magnet that draws the doomed creatures from the most 
distant and secret places of the sea, over stunning obstacles, 
by a memory strand so strong that only death can break it. 
And the most significant circumstance is that these salmon 
forego the purposed culmination of their tragic life — the 
fulfillment of the love-instinct and the consequent con- 
tinuance of the species — when they fail to reach the shrine 
desired for its consummation. 

At length, all difficulties surmounted, the goal is reached ; 
perhaps one in ten, one in fifty, of those who as fingerlings 
ventured to the sea three seasons previously, may have es- 
caped their legion of foes and surmounted the obstacles of 
their difficult path. The wanderers have returned to their 
native lake — to the placid sky-mirror in its frame of sombre 



92 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

green hills, or stark, snow-encumbered mountains, which 
they have never forgotten. But the perils are not at an 
end. In the central waters of the lake, in the larger pools 
of its tributary streams, safety is to be found, but spawning 
has to be eflfected on the margins — in water but a few inches 
deep — and close to these margins watchful enemies lie 
ambushed. If the lake lie near the ocean, the fish arrive 
in fair condition ; they even appear to experience something 
of the joy of life ; one may watch them leaping from the 
deeper pools of the tributary streams ; occasionally from the 
lake itself. But if the latter lie very far inland, the effects 
of weariness and the long fast become apparent; the fish 
take on a gaunt and haggard look. In the male the upper 
jaw undergoes a marked change: that portion immediately 
behind the snout becomes depressed, the forward portion 
curves almost into a hook. This gives the fish a most sin- 
ister expression. 

After a few days' rest the process of spawning begins, and, 
under the veritable shadow of the wing of Death, — in a 
furnace, as it were, of terror and pain, — the link joining 
past with future generations is forged ; the perfect circle 
is completed. 

Ill 

The sockeye have now almost reached the final stage of 
their long travail. The supreme and most fatal sacrifice 
has yet to come — the immolation of a generation upon the 
cold and thankless altar of the Future. But there inter- 
venes a period of rest, — of cessation from persecution, — 
a few score hours of luxurious, almost effortless gliding to 
and fro beneath the placid surface of the liquid mirror into 
which the inconstant sky glances as it is borne past by the 
circling earth. Beneath this surface the water is literally 
as limpid as the untroubled atmosphere which lies so lightly 



ILLUSTRATIONS 93 

upon It. Midsummer is now gliding imperceptibly into 
the fall. The days are long and dreamful ; the winds are 
hushed ; the sky is unmarred, its blue unflecked save by oc- 
casional drifts of fleecy vapor — immaculate flocks born of 
snow which has melted on distant peaks, straying over the 
rare, pellucid pastures of the upper atmosphere. The shriek- 
ing tempest and the blinding snowfall have been — and will 
again be — in some distant and incredible future. 

The days are sultry, and the nights are mild. The water 
is warm and delicious ; nevertheless, it is fatally charged 
with the germs of a terrible disease, — with the spores of the 
Saprolegnia, that foul fungoid which will inevitably attack 
and destroy the debilitated fish when they have reached 
their final stage of exhaustion after the strenuous spawning 
effort. But in the meantime. In those lakes around which 
the shallow spawning ledges lie, there is little to suggest 
danger or death. It is true that the fish-eagles, having fol- 
lowed the run from the sea, perch expectantly upon the tall, 
gaunt stumps — those sinister reminders of long-past forest 
fires which, like skeletons at the feast, are seldom out of sight 
even in the most luxuriant of the forests of Northwestern 
America. Behind the Inevitable rampart of dead logs — 
usually invisible owing to dense undergrowth — lurk bears, 
grizzly or black according to locality. These wait sulkily 
for the final holocaust. They sleep most of the time, their 
dreams, no doubt, being full of gustatory reminiscence and 
anticipation. Their taloned paws are pressed against their 
temporarily depleted paunches ; It Is not likely they will 
be disturbed, for their lairs have been cunningly chosen. 
Many of them have followed the pack from the coast, gorging 
luxuriously at each obstruction, going empty when the course 
was clear. But their final and most Gargantuan feast Is 
now nearly at hand. The restless coyotes slink in and out 
of the thickets, hollow-flanked and impatient. 



94 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

But in the meantime the fish are out of danger and at 
peace. There are exceptions to this rule. If the run be 
a great one there is considerable competition for the avail- 
able gravel-beds ; consequently the sockeye set to work 
preempting spawning-sites immediately upon arrival. At 
night the drumming of the ruffed grouse may fill a steep 
gorge with miniature thunder. Occasionally the long- 
drawn howl of a timber-wolf or the gulping snarl of a panther, 
as it tears at the throat of a slain deer, makes weird the night. 
But such sounds are rare; the North American forest is 
usually as silent as the grave. 

However, under the surface of the lake is peace, utter 
and profound ; and, for the moment, safety. Dawn sends 
its spell across the dreaming forest, dappling its darkness 
with softly-paling shades. As the light grows, each tall 
fellowship of firs stands forth in sombre relief. The nearer 
comes the sun, the darker grows the forest. The surface 
of the lake is like glass — except where broken here and 
there by a leaping trout. A piercing ray of light thrills 
like an arrow through the trees cresting the eastern horizon. 
Then the timid dawn flies westward, and morning, trium- 
phant, reigns. The slow hours trail on to noon — to after- 
noon — in sultry procession, until evening essays to repro- 
duce the rapture of daybreak, but fails for lack of mystery. 

And what of the sockeye during those halcyon hours f 
One does not know; yet one may reasonably believe they 
enjoy a measure of content — even of happiness. May it 
not be that during this interval they seek their affinities — 
those mates in conjunction with whom the final and fatal 
mystery of their love's consummation may be fulfilled ? 
That they do select their mates is certain ; it is also certain, 
as will be shown, that the process of selection is marred by 
disharmonies and cruelties very similar to those which so 
often disfigure the sex-relations of human beings. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 95 

But may we not at least infer the sockeye's enjoyment of 
the sense of having triumphed over enormous difficulties 
and escaped frightful dangers — their realization of the de- 
sirous dream which was ever present during their long, 
eventful wanderings ? Here is the region where they first 
swam freely — breathing and, by the same operation, feed- 
ing upon those microscopic organisms with which stepmother 
Nature had filled the limpid waters for their first nourish- 
ment. Here, by the constant discipline of escape from the 
Steelhead trout and their own aberrant kin who decided to 
spend a second, or even a third, year in the lake, they had 
braced and schooled themselves for tremendous achievements. 
Here Nature, in the guise of " the genius of the genus," had 
broken the cells of the germ-plasm with which their tiny 
brains were charged, and revealed to them — by the pro- 
cess we name instinctive — the tremendous purpose of their 
mysterious existence. 

Nature has strange and often unthought-of methods of 
adjusting balances. May it not be that the happiness, 
the bliss realized by these creatures as they lie wrapped in 
the mild waters of their natal lake is deep and searching 
enough to compensate for all they have endured ? May it 
not be that if only one in a hundred — one in a thousand — 
realizes it, the hundredth or thousandth chance of realiza- 
tion may be sufficient recompense ? " Many are called, but 
few are chosen," was said by the Christ of men and the King- 
dom of Heaven ; and the God of Israel was justified in that 
terrible saying. May not the same be true of fishes — their 
travail in the Great Waters and their short interval of bliss- 
ful peace in the Delectable Lakes ? But who shall dare to 
justify the majestic, terrible, and blood-stained steps of that 
awful entity we term Nature .>* 

The final act, the spawning, begins. The female sockeye 
selects a gravelly spot, usually near the margin of some 



96 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

tributary stream — a spot over which water, to the depth 
of some three or four inches, flows. Her chosen mate 
follows and watches her actions with anxious attention. 
The fish have now markedly changed their color : the 
clean metallic blue has given place to a hectic flush of red. 
The female lies sideways on the gravel, with her head 
upstream. Then she bends her body and immediately 
again straightens it with a quivering jerk. This displaces 
the gravel over an area about equal in extent to the palm 
of one's hand, and causes a slight hollow. The displaced 
gravel is pushed downstream and thus forms a hillock 
below the hollow. The fish then rubs her abdomen side- 
ways and with a quivering motion on the lower edge of 
the hollow and close to the upper base of the hillock, emitting 
the ova as she does so. During the operation the hillock 
grows by accretion of the disturbed pebbles. The male fish 
is at hand ; he expresses the milt in the same manner in 
which the female expresses the eggs. The milt has to reach 
the eggs within two minutes and twenty seconds of their 
emission ; otherwise fertilization does not take place. 

The eggs are carried by the milt-laden stream into the in- 
terstices of the hillock. The fish resulting from those eggs 
which remain exposed die within a few days after they have 
been hatched. Even if they escape the host of greedy 
enemies lying in wait for them, they become infected fatally 
in the region of the umbilical sac by the Saprolegnia fungus. 
It is still unexplained why the fry hatched out among the 
stones of the hillock are not attacked. Possibly the spores 
of the Saprolegnia cannot live in darkness ; possibly some 
antidote-parasite exists which is ineffective in light. Herein 
lies an interesting subject for investigation. 

The expression of the ova as well as that of the milt is a 
purely mechanical operation, for the sockeye has no muscu- 
lar apparatus to assist in the process of voiding. It is solely 



ILLUSTRATIONS 97 

through the bending of the body, the quivering jerk, and 
the rubbing on the pebbles that the expression is effected. 
The female normally contains some five thousand eggs. 
About four days are consumed in the work of expressing. 
By that time the abdomen of the fish is usually raw and 
void of scales in the vicinity of the vent. 

Herein is manifested one of Nature's energy-saving de- 
vices. If the sockeye were furnished with the usual ex- 
pressing apparatus, it would not have to jerk and struggle ; 
thus the hillock would not be formed, and some round- 
about way of eluding the Saprolegnia spores and other en- 
emies would have to be devised. So Nature withheld 
from a highly specialized creature an organ proper to its 
rank in the zoological scale — forcing it to descend from the 
heights of specialization and perform a lowly, rudimentary 
action. It is almost as though the commander-in-chief of 
an army were set to the work of digging trenches. 

If the run be a moderate or a small one, each female 
sockeye insists upon having a considerable space free around 
her spawning hillock, and will energetically attack any other 
female venturing into her vicinity. But if the run be large 
and space be consequently limited, other fish may spawn 
within a few feet and no objection be made. Should an- 
other female attempt to appropriate a preempted spot, a 
fierce combat would result. 

Sockeye both male and female — unattached, unconven- 
tional beings not bound by the accepted ethical rules : pis- 
catorial hcme-wreckers, in fact — are apt to disturb the 
harmony of the spawning grounds. Some female fish, 
whose symmetry is comparatively unmarred owing to a suc- 
cession of lucky escapes, and who consequently has most 
of her strength in reserve, may glide in and try to appro- 
priate the hillock on the erection of which some matron-fish 
has expended almost her last available energy. A combat 



98 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

will inevitably ensue ; contrary to all ethical canons, vic- 
tory will most likely go to the intruder. The male fish will 
not interfere. His tail fanning just enough to counteract 
the pull of the current, he will impartially watch the con- 
test. If his old companion be driven forth to a lonely death, 
he will impartially mate with the newcomer. Again, one 
may observe mateless males of comparatively superior 
physique moving about over the spawning grounds, evidently 
on the lookout for mated males whose physique is inferior. 
When one of the latter is found, a combat — which may 
exhibit great savagery — will follow. In such cases the fe- 
male regards the situation with tranquil unconcern. Should 
the male originally in possession be vanquished, he will 
accept the inevitable and glide tranquilly to his death — 
let us hope a euthanasia — in the profound calm of the 
adjacent waters, while his wife accepts the companionship 
of the victor with equanimity. 

The foregoing represents ideal spawning conditions, 
which, however, do not as a rule exist. When the pack ar- 
rives, the carnivora of the forest-covered ranges surround- 
ing the lake crowd in to take their toll of the hapless sockeye. 
The great grizzly bear lumbers over the gravel-beds, and, dis- 
playing unsuspected quickness with his murderously taloned 
paws, flicks the wearied and preoccupied fish high and dry 
into the undergrowth. After he has gorged his fill, the grizzly 
will lay up treasure (that will soon smell to heaven) for the 
coming weeks. Twenty to thirty fish he will collect into a 
heap ; over these he will pile logs and rocks so large and 
heavy that, even remembering the strength of his thews, 
one wonders at his ability to move them through the dense 
jungle. The black bear gorges too, but apparently accumu- 
lates no store. Nevertheless he becomes fetid, blear-eyed, 
unhealthy generally, and filthy in his habits. Sometimes 
his dulled fur falls off in patches until his once silky coat 



ILLUSTRATIONS 99 

suggests that of a mangy dog. The coyote, too, gorges to 
a point of scandalous obesity. Every creature capable of 
sustaining its life upon flesh crowds in to take toll of the 
hapless salmon. 

Spawning over, the spent and exhausted creatures now 
mere living corpses, — distorted, emaciated, and disfigured, 
— cleave their slow and painful way back to the deep waters 
of the lake. The results of the Saprolegnia infection now 
develop : foul festoons — the bearers of spores to infect the 
next generation of sockeye — hang from lips, eye-rims, 
gill-shields, and fins. The pairs which have spawned to- 
gether as a rule maintain their companionship, each pair 
seeming to shun the society of others. Their movements 
become slower, stiffer. This existence may be prolonged 
for a fortnight; it usually continues for a week. Then 
comes death. For a brief period, the poor, disfigured car- 
casses float at the surface; then they sink to the bottom, 
where the soft tissues undergo swift disintegration. 

The hatching-period of the sockeye egg varies according 
to the temperature of the water. The governing principle 
has been ingeniously worked out and determined by Mr. 
Wallach, of the United States Fisheries Department. It 
is as follows. Take freezing point, 32° Fahrenheit, as the 
basis. Then take the mean temperature of the water on 
each day, starting with the day on which the egg was ex- 
pressed, and deduct 32 from it. As soon as the remainders 
reach a total of 990, the egg will have hatched. 

To make the thing quite clear the following table is given. 
Assume that on the day of spawning and the four subsequent 
days, the respective mean temperatures read as follows : 
52, 55, 53, 60, 54. 

1st day, 52 — 32 = 20 

2nd day, 55 - 32 = 23 



100 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

3rd day, 53 - 32 = 21 
4th day, 60 — 32 = 28 
5th day, 54 — 32 = 22 

and so on. When the footing of the third column reaches 
990, the egg will have hatched. The little fish soon becomes 
a free swimmer, but some eight weeks pass before the um- 
bilical sac is fully absorbed. Then the minute, semitrans- 
parent creature, helpless, except for the instinct that prompts 
it toward concealment from ever-vigilant enemies, starts 
on its independent career. 

And what of that atom of faintly clouded jelly — its 
brain ? Did any other physical substance ever bear such 
a tremendous load ^ Pictured or written therein is the 
vast and varied experience of the whole sockeye race, prob- 
ably dating from a period before Vancouver Island emerged 
from the ocean, when the highest peaks of the Rocky Moun- 
tains were wave-washed islands (there is evidence to be de- 
duced from certain habits of the sockeye that this is the case). 
In that receptacle must be stored records of millions of pre- 
cedents — clues for guidance through a life-embracing laby- 
rinth of dangers and difficulties. It contains the tragedy 
and the triumph of the sockeye race. One's mind reels 
before the abyss. 

THE CORONATION OF CHARLES THE GREAT 1 

Charles the Great in 800 a.d. was already the most powerful ruler of Eu- 
rope. The coronation here described added nothing definite to his terri- 
tories, but made him nominally successor to the ancient Roman emperors. 

^The six accounts are reprinted from Duncalf and Krey's "Parallel 
Source Problems " by special permission of the editors and of the 
publishers, Messrs. Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 19 12, by Harper & 
Brothers. 



ILLUSTRATIONS lOI 

The traditional awe with which the northern barbarians had viewed the 
one, undivided world empire of Rome lasted centuries after the collapse of 
her power, and could still be felt toward the Prankish king who — by how- 
ever empty a claim — now became titular heir to the Caesars. For this 
reason the coronation was a historic event. It conferred on Charlemagne 
no new lands, but gave him great prestige and a firmer hold on the popular 
imagination. The preceding pope, Hadrian I, had been disinclined to be- 
stow on any king the emperorship or "imperium." However, Pope Leo 
III, successor to Hadrian in 795, was driven by the attacks of his enemies to 
seek help from Charles, who in the following year journeyed to Rome, and 
was crowned emperor ("imperator") in the manner here set forth. 

Of the six following accounts, the first four were certainly, and the fifth 
was probably, the work of Charles's contemporaries. The sixth was written 
nearly a century after the coronation that it describes. The "Annales 
Laurissenses," though named from the abbey of Lorsch, were probably com- 
posed by prominent men connected with Charles's court, closely in touch 
with political life and the most reliable sources of information. The " Annales 
Laurishamenses," also named from the abbey of Lorsch, may or may not 
have been written there. Their style and matter indicate that they were 
the work of intelligent and well informed men. The "Vita Karoli" (Life of 
Charles) is a biography by Einhard, who was intimate with the emperor 
and one of the foremost historians and scholars of his time. Theophanis, 
the author of the " Chronographia," was a prominent Greek writer, living in 
the Eastern, or Byzantine Empire. He was thus in the position of an in- 
telligent foreigner, discussing a contemporary event at a distance. The 
" Vita Leonis III " (Life of Leo III) is from the " Liber Pontlficalis " or " Book 
of The Popes," and describes the coronation from the point of view of the 
Church, which might not always agree with that of the lay historian. " De 
Gestis Karoli " (Concerning the Deeds of Charles), by the Monk of St. Gall, 
is of uncertain authorship and was written between 884 and 887. It con- 
tains many mythical tales about Charlemagne, some of which were local 
and confined to the region of Germany around St. Gall. 



The Annates Laurissenses {the Annals of Lorsch) 

. . . And in the beginning of the month of August, when he 

[Charles] reached Mainz, he decided to journey into 

Italy. When he reached Ravenna with his army he 

made preparations for an expedition against the Beneven- 



102 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

tians. After a delay of seven days Charles started for Rome, 
having ordered his son Pepin to ravage the lands of the 
Beneventians with the army. As he approached Rome, 
Pope Leo, accompanied by Romans, met him at Momen- 
tum, which is at the twelfth milestone from the city. After 
greeting him with the greatest humility the pope dined with 
him at this town. The pope then returned to the city, 
and on the following day he stationed himself on the steps 
of the basilica of the blessed apostle Peter, with the standard 
of the Roman city, and crowds of pilgrims and citizens ar- 
ranged and disposed in suitable places to shout praises to 
those coming. Leo himself with the clergy and bishops 
received Charles when he dismounted from his horse and 
ascended the steps. When an oration had been delivered, 
while all were chanting psalms, the king was led into the 
basilica of the blessed apostle Peter. This happened on 
the eighth day before the Calends of December (Novem- 
ber 24). 

Seven days later the king began to busy himself with the 
important affairs that had brought him and all his men to 
the city of Rome, and thenceforth daily he was occupied with 
these matters. The first and most difficult of these tasks 
was the investigation of the crimes of which the holy pon- 
tiff had been accused. As no one wished to be sponsor 
for the pope's guilt, Leo ascended to the altar of the church 
of the apostle Peter in the presence of all the people, with 
the Evangel in his hand, and by oath, in the name of the 
Holy Trinity, purged himself of the charges which had 
been made against him. 

On the same day Zachary returned from the East with 
two monks, whom the Patriarch of Jerusalem had sent 
back with him.^ One of them was from the Mount of Olives 

1 In 799 Charles was visited by a monk from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, 
who brought blessings and relics from the Holy Sepulcher. On Christmas 



ILLUSTRATIONS I03 

and the other from St. Saba. As a blessing they brought 
the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and of Mount Calvary, also 
the keys of the city and of the Mount (Zion) and a banner. 
The king received them graciously, and kept them with 
him many days, sending them away in April with gifts. He 
celebrated the birthday of the Lord at Rome. And the 
number of the years changed into 

801.1 

On the most sacred birthday of the Lord, while the king 
was at mass, and just as he was rising from prayer before the 
grave of St. Peter, Pope Leo placed the crown on his head, 
and all the people shouted "Charles Augustus, crowned 
great and peace-giving Imperator of the Romans, life and 
victory 1" After this praise he was saluted by the apostle ^ 
according to the custom of the ancient emperors.^ The 
title Patrician was dropped, and he was called Imperator 
and Augustus. After a few days he ordered the men who 
had deposed the pontiff the preceding year to be brought 
before him. They were tried according to the Roman law 
for the crime of treason, and were condemned to death. 
The pope interceded for them, and life and the integrity of 
their bodies was granted to them. Some of them were 

day of the same year Charles sent back a priest, Zachary, with gifts for the 
Holy Sepulchre, and other sacred spots around Jerusalem. On his return 
one year later Zachary found Charles at Rome. 

^ The year did not always begin on January ist in the Middle Ages. 
In the present case Christmas day was regarded as the first day of the year, 
hence, according to most of the writers, the coronation occurred on the first 
day of the year 801. 

2 The pope. 

' At the accession of a new emperor to the throne at Constantinople, an 
election was first necessary. This election was made by the senate, with 
the army and the people participating. The coronation proper was a re- 
ligious ceremony in which the patriarch of Constantinople crowned the new 
emperor. Compare this custom with that followed in 800. 



I04 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

sent into exile as a punishment for their most serious 
crime. . . . 

2 

The Annales Laurishamenses ^ {the Annals of Lorsch) 
And in the summer he [Charles] called together his lords 
and nobles at the city of Mainz. When he had assured 
himself that peace reigned throughout all his dominions 
he called to mind the injury that the Romans had inflicted 
on Pope Leo, and setting his face toward Rome, he jour- 
neyed thither. When he had arrived there he summoned 
a great council of bishops and abbots, also priests, deacons, 
counts, and other Christian people. Those who wished to 
condemn the apostle himself were brought before this as- 
sembly. When the king had made investigation he was 
convinced that they did not want to condemn the pope with 
justice, but through spite. It was therefore clear to the 
most pious prince, Charles, and to all the bishops and holy 
fathers present, that, if the pope wished and should ask it, 
he ought to purify himself by his own will, voluntarily, and 
not by the judgment of the council; and this was done. 
When he had taken the oath, the holy bishops and all the 
clergy. Prince Charles and the devote Christian people 
began the hymn, Te Deum laudamus, te Dominum con- 
fitemur. When this was entirely finished, the king and all 
the faithful people with him gave thanks to God, who had 
preserved the apostle Leo sound in body and mind. And 
he passed the winter in Rome. 

Inasmuch as the title of Imperator had ceased among the 

Greeks at this time and the imperium was in the hands of 

a woman,^ it was evident to the apostle Leo and all the 

holy fathers who had taken part in the council, as well as 

* Laurissenses and Laurishamenses are merely diiferent ways of spelling 
the Latin name for Lorsch. 

* Empress Irene, queen of Byzantium. 



ILLUSTRATIONS I05 

to all the Christian people, that Charles, king of the Franks, 
ought to be called Imperator. For he held the city of Rome, 
where the Caesars had always resided, and he also ruled Italy, 
Gaul, and Germany likewise. Because God Almighty had 
placed all these countries in his power it seemed just to them 
that, with God favoring it and all the Christian people de- 
manding it, he should have the title itself. King Charles 
was not willing to refuse this demand, but with all humility, 
and obedient to the Lord and the petition of the clergy and 
all the Christian people, on the very day of the nativity of 
our Lord Jesus Christ he was consecrated by the lord pope 
Leo, and received the title of Imperator. Then, first of all 
he restored peace and concord to the Holy Roman Church, 
and he celebrated Easter at Rome. When summer ap- 
proached he directed his journey to Ravenna, giving justice 
and restoring order. He then returned to his palace in 
France. . . . 

3 
The Vita Karoli {the Life of Charles) by Einhard 

Although he [Charles] regarded Rome highly, during all 
the forty-seven years of his reign he went to the city only 
four times to pay his vows and to offer his prayers. 

This was not the only reason for his last visit, however. 
Indeed, the Romans had greatly Injured Pope Leo. They 
tore out his eyes and cut off his tongue, and thus he was 
forced to ask protection from the king. So he went to Rome 
to improve the condition of the Church, which was greatly 
disturbed, and remained there the entire winter. At this 
time he received the titles of Imperator and Augustus, which 
he was so opposed to at first that he said he would never 
have entered the church on that day, although it was a very 
important festival of the Church, if he had known the in- 
tention of the pope. Nevertheless, having accepted the 
title, he endured with great patience the jealousy that it 



I06 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

caused, for the Roman emperors were very indignant. He 
overcame their pride by magnanimity, in which he doubt- 
less excelled them, and by sending frequent embassies to 
them, and by calling them brothers in his letters. . . . 



The Chronographia {Annals) of Theophanis 

... In the same year [8oi] partisans of the Roman pope, 
Hadrian, of blessed memory, started a riot against Pope 
Leo and injured his eyesight. The men who were selected 
to put out his eyes were moved by pity and spared him, so 
that he was not completely blinded. Leo immediately fled 
to Charles, king of the Franks. The king took vengeance 
on the enemies of the pope and restored him to his seat. 
Thus at this time Rome fell into the hands of the Franks and 
continued thus. Leo repaid Charles by anointing him from 
head to foot with oil in the church of the blessed apostle, 
and, having saluted him with the title of Imperator, 
he crowned him. He also clothed him with the imperial 
robes and insignia. This happened on the 25th day of the 
month of December, in the ninth indiction.^ ... 



Fita Leonis III. {Life of Leo IIL) from the Liber 
Pontificalis 

... A few days after [the arrival of Leo at Rome], the 
faithful missi,'^ who had returned with the pope to Rome in 

^ The indiction was originally a period of fifteen years, at the close 
of which the Roman government revived its tax assessments. Later it 
was used to reckon time. The first indiction was that of 312 a.d. The 
ninth indiction means the ninth year of one of these fifteen-year periods, 
and not the ninth period. According to the Greek calendar, the year began 
on September ist, so that Charles was crowned in the year 801, which would 
make it the ninth year of that indictional period. 

2 The missi were officials of the Carolingian kings, of which the famous 



ILLUSTRATIONS I07 

obedience to the pontifical desires — namely, Hildebald 
and Arno, both most reverend archbishops; Cunibert, 
Bernhard, Otto, and Jesse, most reverend and holy bishops ; 
also Flaccus, bishop-elect; and Helingot, Rothgar, and 
Germar, famous counts. They were entertained at the table 
of the lord pope Leo, and were examining those malicious 
offenders for more than a week to discover what evidence 
they might have against the pope. Neither Pascal nor 
Campulus^ had any evidence that they could report, and 
neither did their accomplices say anything against him. 
So the aforementioned missi of the great king seized the 
culprits and sent them into France. 

After a time the great king joined them at the basilica of 
the blessed apostle Peter, and was received with great honor. 
He called a council of the archbishops, the bishops, the ab- 
bots, and all the French nobles, as well as the prominent 
Romans in the same church. The great king as well as the 
most blessed pontiff were seated, likewise they made the 
most holy archbishops and abbots seat themselves, but all 
the other priests and the French and Roman nobles remained 
standing. He summoned this council to investigate all the 
charges that had been made against the sanctity of the pontiff. 
When all the archbishops, the bishops, and the abbots heard 
this they said : "We do not dare to judge the apostolic see, 
which is the head of all the churches of God, for we are all 
judged by it and its vicar. Furthermore, it should be judged 
by no one, according to what was the ancient custom. What- 
ever the chief pontiff proposes we will obey canonically." 
The venerable chief said: "I follow the footsteps of the 

missi dominici were a special type. The men whose names are given were 
prominent men in the service of Charles, who were sent on a special mission 
to look after his interests at Rome. 

^ Pascal and Campulus were the leaders of the conspiracy and attack 
that was made on Pope Leo in 799. 



I08 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

pontiffs who were my predecessors. I am ready to purify 
myself of such false charges as have been basely made 
against me." 

On a later day in the same church of the blessed apostle 
Peter, when all were present — namely, archbishops, bishops, 
abbots, all the Franks, who were in the service of the great 
king, and all the Romans, the venerable pontiff, grasping 
the four Gospels of Christ, mounted to the altar and with 
a clear voice took the oath : "Inasmuch as I have no know- 
ledge of these false crimes, which the Romans, who have 
persecuted me, have basely charged me with, I say that I 
do not need to have such knowledge." When this was done 
litanies were chanted, and all the archbishops, bishops, ab- 
bots, and all the clergy gave praise to God and to the Virgin 
Mary, the mother of God, to the blessed apostle Peter, chief 
of the apostles, and to all the saints of God. 

On the natal day of our Lord Jesus Christ all were again 
gathered together in the same basilica of the blessed apostle 
Peter, and there the venerable, holy pontiff with his own 
hands crowned Charles the Great with a crown of great 
value. Then all the faithful Romans, when they realized how 
great protection and care the Holy Roman Church and its 
vicar would have because of this act which had the favor of 
God and the blessed Peter, the key-bearer of the kingdom 
of heaven, unanimously shouted with loud voices, "Charles, 
most pious Augustus, crowned great, peace-giving Im- 
perator by God, life and victory!" This was shouted three 
times, and many saints were invoked before the grave of the 
blessed apostle Peter, and thus by all he was made Imperator 
of the Romans. There the most holy bishop and pontiff 
anointed Charles with the sacred oil, also his most excellent 
son [Charles] as king, on the birthday of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

After the celebration of the mass the most serene lord 



ILLUSTRATIONS I09 

Imperator presented a silver table weighing . . . pounds 
with its legs. Likewise, at the grave of the apostle of God, 
the Imperator and his son, the king, and his daughters pre- 
sented various vases to accompany this table, all of pure gold, 
weighing . . . pounds, also a gold crown set with large 
gems, to be hung over the altar, and two swords weighing 
fifty-eight pounds, and a large vessel of gold, set with gems, 
. . . [the list of gifts continues]. 

Afterward those iniquitous malefactors — namely, Pascal 
and Campulus — and their associates were brought into the 
presence of the most pious lord Imperator, with all the noble 
Franks and Romans standing about. All were indignant 
about the misdeeds of these men. Campulus turned to Pas- 
cal and said, "It was an evil day when I saw your face, 
for you are to blame for my being in this trouble." And 
so, each condemning the other, they themselves proved their 
own guilt. When the lord Imperator realized how cruel 
and iniquitous they were he sent them into France. 



De Gestis Caroli Magni {The Deeds of Charles the Great), 
by the Monk of St. Gall 

Although other mortals may be deceived by the works of 
the devil and his satellites, it is fitting to meditate on the 
words of the Lord when He commended the brave confes- 
sion of Saint Peter, saying, "Because you are Peter, I will 
build my church upon this rock, and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it," for even in these evil and troubled 
days the Church has remained firm and unshaken. 

Because jealous people are always consumed by envy it 
was generally customary among the Romans to show hostility 
and even to fight against the great popes who were elevated 
to the apostolic seat. Thus it happened that certain of 



no FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the Romans who were blinded by envy accused Leo, of holy 
memory, whom we have referred to above, of terrible crimes. 
Moreover, they attacked him with the intention of blind- 
ing him, but, checked and restrained by the divine will, 
they failed to tear out his eyes, although they did cut them 
across the middle with knives. Secretly the pope had the 
news of this sent by his servants to Michael, emperor at Con- 
stantinople, who withheld all aid, saying, "The pope has a 
kingdom of his own, higher than mine, and must revenge him- 
self on his own enemies." Then the holy pope, following 
the divine will, summoned to Rome the unconquerable Charles 
who was in reality ruler of many peoples, in order that he 
might gloriously obtain the titles of Imperator, Ccesar^ and 
Augustus by apostolic authority. 

Charles, who was always engaged in campaigns and mili- 
tary affairs, although he was ignorant of the cause of the sum- 
mons, without delay came with all his warriors and fighting 
men : the lord of the world came to the capital of the world. 
And when that most depraved people heard of his unexpected 
arrival, just as sparrows hide themselves from the sight of 
their master so the Romans hid in various hiding-places. 
But they were not able to escape the energy and sagacity of 
Charles under heaven, and so they were captured and led into 
the basilica of St. Peter in chains. There the undefiled Father 
Leo took the Evangel and, holding it over his head before 
Charles and his men, with his persecutors present, took the 
following oath, "On the great judgment day may I enjoy 
the fulfilment of the promises of the Gospel, as I am innocent 
of the charges that have been made against me." Then 
the terrible Charles said to his men, "Take care that none 
of them escape." All were seized and condemned either to 
different kinds of death or to perpetual exile. 

As Charles remained in the city for several days to give 
his army a necessary rest the chief of the apostolic see sum- 



ILLUSTRATIONS III 

moned all who would come from the surrounding country 
to Rome. In the presence of all these people and the in- 
vincible counts of the most glorious Charles, who did not 
suspect anything, the pope pronounced him Imperator and 
Defender of the Roman Church. Since he was not able to 
refuse the title, for he believed that he had received it by 
divine favor, nevertheless he did not receive it with joy, 
because he believed that the Greeks, fired by greater jealousy, 
would lay plots against the kingdom of the Franks, or at 
least be more careful to make all necessary preparations to 
prevent Charles from suddenly coming to subjugate their 
empire, for there was a rumor that he intended to do this. 
For on a former occasion when the legate of the Byzantine 
king visited him, and had told him that his master wished 
to be a faithful friend, and that if they were only not sepa- 
rated from each other by so great a distance, that he would 
treat Charles as a son and relieve his poverty, Charles, 
who was not able to restrain his burning spirit, burst forth, 
"Oh! If that pool were not between us, we could either 
divide or hold together in common the wealth of the East." 
Indeed, the Giver and Restorer of health showed his be- 
lief in the innocence of the blessed Leo, for even after that 
cruel wound had been received He made his eyes brighter 
than they were before, except that a most beautiful scar 
remained as a sign of virtue to decorate his eyelids, very 
like a fine thread in the white snow. . . . 

ACCOUNTS OF THE NAVAL BATTLE OF JUTLAND ^ 

I 

The first German Admiralty report of the battle was 
issued on Thursday, June i, and reads as follows : 

^ Reprinted from "The Current History Magazine" of "The New York 
Times " (July, August, and September numbers for 1916) by special permis- 
sion of the editors. 



112 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Berlin, June i, 1916. 

During an enterprise directed to the northward our high sea fleet on May 
31 encountered the main part of the English fighting fleet, which was con- 
siderably superior to our forces. 

During the afternoon, between Skagerrak and Horn Riff, a heavy engage- 
ment developed, which was successful to us, and which continued during 
the whole night. 

In this engagement, so far as known up to the present, there were de- 
stroyed by us the large battleship Warspite, the battle cruisers Queen Mary 
and Indefatigable^ two armored cruisers, apparently of the Achilles type; 
one small cruiser, the new flagships of destroyer squadrons, the Turbulent^ 
Nestor, and Alcaster, a large number of torpedo-boat destroyers, and one 
submarine. 

By observation, which was free and clear of objects, it was stated that a 
large number of English battleships suffered damage from our ships and 
the attacks of our torpedo-boat flotilla during the day engagement and 
throughout the night. Among others, the large battleship Marlborough 
was hit by a torpedo. This was confirmed by prisoners. 

Several of our ships rescued parts of the crews of the sunken English ships, 
among them being two and the only survivors of the Indefatigable. 

On our side the small cruiser Wiesbaden, by hostile gun fire during the 
day engagement, and his Majesty's ship Pommern, during the night, as 
the result of a torpedo, were sunk. 

The fate of his Majesty's ship Frauenlob, which is missing, and of some 
torpedo boats, which have not returned yet, is unknown. 

The High Sea Fleet returned to-day (Thursday) into our port. 

The first report of the British Admiralty was issued a 
day later, and is as follows : 

London, June 2, 1916. 

On the afternoon of Wednesday, the 31st of May, a naval engagement 
took place off the coast of Jutland. 

The British ships on which the brunt of the fighting fell were the battle 
cruiser fleet and some cruisers and light cruisers, supported by four fast 
battleships. Among these the losses were heavy. 

The German battle fleet, aided by low visibility, avoided a prolonged 
action with our main forces. As soon as these appeared on the scene the 
enemy returned to port, though not before receiving severe damage from 
our battleships. 



ILLUSTRATIONS II3 

The battle cruisers Queen Mary, Indefatigable, and Invincible, and the 
cruisers Defense and Black Prince were sunk. 

The Warrior was disabled, and after being towed for some time had to be 
abandoned by her crew. 

It is also known that the destroyers Tipperary, Turbulent, Fortune, Spar- 
fowhawk, and Ardent were lost, and six others are not yet accounted for. 

No British battleships or light cruisers were sunk. 

The enemy's losses were serious. At least one battle cruiser was de- 
stroyed and one was severely damaged. One battleship is reported to have 
been sunk by our destroyers. 

During the night attack two light cruisers were disabled and probably 
sunk. 

The exact number of enemy destroyers disposed of during the action can- 
not be ascertained with any certainty, but must have been large. 

Later this further statement was published : 

Since the foregoing communication was issued a further report has been 
received from the Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet stating that it 
has now been ascertained that our total losses in destroyers amount to eight 
boats in all. 

The Commander in Chief also reports that it is now possible to form a 
closer estimate of the losses and the damage sustained by the enemy fleet. 

One dreadnought battleship of the Kaiser class was blown up in an 
attack by British destroyers, and another dreadnought battleship of the 
Kaiser class is believed to have been sunk by gunfire. Of three German 
battle cruisers, two of which, it is believed, were the Derfflinger and the Lictzow, 
one was blown up, another was heavily engaged by our battle fleet and 
was seen to be disabled and stopping, and the third was observed to be 
seriously damaged. 

One German light cruiser and six German destroyers were sunk, and at 
least two more German light cruisers were seen to be disabled. Further 
repeated hits were observed on three other German battleships that were 
engaged. 

Finally, a German submarine was rammed and sunk. 

The Chief of the German Admiralty Staff issued this 
secondary statement on June 3 : 

In order to prevent fabulous reports, it is again stated that in the battle 
off Skagerrak on May 3 1 the German high sea forces were in battle with the 
entire modern English fleet. 

I 



114 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

To the already published statements it must be added that, according to 
the official British report, the battle cruiser Invincible and the armored 
cruiser Warrior were also destroyed. 

We were obliged to blow up the small cruiser Elbing, which, on the night 
of May 31-June I, owing to a collision with other German war vessels, was 
heavily damaged, and it was impossible to take her to port. The crew 
was rescued by torpedo boats, with the exception of the commander, two 
other officers, and eighteen men, who remained aboard in order to blow up 
the vessel. According to Dutch reports they were later brought to Ymuiden 
on a tug and landed there. 

The British Admiralty's next statement, dated June 4, 
impugns the truth of the German report in these terms : 

The Grand Fleet came in touch with the German High Seas Fleet at 3 : 30 
on the afternoon of May 31. The leading ships of the two fleets carried on 
a vigorous fight, in which the battle cruisers, fast battleships, and subsidiary 
craft all took an active part. 

The losses were severe on both sides, but when the main body of the 
British fleet came into contact with the German High Seas Fleet, a very 
brief period sufficed to compel the latter, who had been severely punished, 
to seek refuge in their protected waters. This manoeuvre was rendered 
possible by low visibility and mist, and, although the Grand Fleet were now 
and then able to get in momentary contact with their opponents, no con- 
tinuous action was possible. They continued the pursuit until the light had 
wholly failed, while the British destroyers were able to make a successful 
attack upon the enemy during the night. 

Meanwhile, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, having driven the enemy into 
port, returned to the main scene of the action and scoured the sea in search 
of disabled vessels. By noon the next day, June i, it became evident that 
there was nothing more to be done. He returned, therefore, to his bases, 
400 miles away, refueled his fleet, and in the evening of June 2 was again 
ready to put to sea. . . . 

There seems to be the strongest ground for supposing that included in 
the German losses are two battleships, two dreadnought battle cruisers of 
the most powerful type, two of the latest light cruisers, the Wiesbaden and 
Elbing; a light cruiser of the Rostock type, the light cruiser Frauenlob, 
nine destroyers, and a submarine. 

To this was added the following on June 6 : 

An official statement given out in Berlin to-day, signed " Fleet Command," 
claims the British lost the Warspite, Princess Royal, Birmingham, and 



ILLUSTRATIONS II 5 

Acasta in the action of May 31. This is claimed on the evidence of British 
sailors picked up by German ships. 

This is false. The complete list of British losses is as published. 

The German Admiralty, in an official statement issued on June 2, stated 
that, among other casualties, a British submarine was Sunk in the course 
of the battle during the afternoon and night of May 31. 

All British submarines at sea on that date have now returned. It must, 
therefore, be assumed, if any importance is to be attached to the German 
official statement, that the submarine sunk was an enemy submarine. This 
vessel should be added to the list of German losses stated in the British Ad- 
miralty communique of June 4. 

An official German statement admitting the loss of the 
Lutiow and Rostock was issued June 8. The losses of the 
British are again said to have been heavier than admitted 
by them. The official writer continues : 

It is asserted, for instance, that the German fleet left the battlefield and 
that the English fleet remained master of the battlefield. With regard to 
this it is stated that by repeated, effective attacks of our torpedo-boat 
flotillas during the battle on the evening of May 3 1 the English main fleet 
was forced to turn around, and it never again came within sight of our forces. 
In spite of its superior speed and reinforcement by an English squadron of 
twelve vessels, which came up from the southern North Sea, it never at- 
tempted to come again into touch with our forces to continue the battle or 
attempt in conjunction with the above-mentioned squadron to bring about 
the desired destruction of the German fleet. 

The English assertion that the English fleet in vain attempted to reach 
the fleeing German fleet in order to defeat it before reaching its home points 
of support is contradicted by the alleged official English statement that 
Admiral Jellicoe, with his Grand Fleet, already had reached the basin of 
Scalpa Flow, in the Orkneys, 300 miles from the battlefield, on June i. 

Numerous German torpedo-boat flotillas sent out after the day battle 
for a night attack toward the north, and beyond the theatre of the day 
battle, did not find the English main fleet in spite of a keen search. More- 
over, our torpedo boats had an opportunity of rescuing a great number of 
English survivors of the various sunken vessels. 

As further proof of the fact, contested by the English, of the participation 
of their entire battle fleet in the battle of May 31, it is pointed out that the 
British Admiralty report too announced that the Marlborough had been 
disabled. Furthermore, one of our submarines on June i sighted another 



Il6 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

of the Iron Duke class heavily damaged steering toward the English coast. 
Both mentioned vessels belonged to the English main fleet. 

In order to belittle the great German success the English press also traces 
the loss of numerous English vessels largely to the effect of German mines, 
submarines, and airships. Regarding this, it is especially pointed out 
that neither mines, which, by the way, would have been just as dangerous 
to our own fleet as to that of the enemy, nor submarines were employed by 
our High Seas Fleet. German airships were used exclusively for recon- 
noissance on June i. 

The German victory was gained by able leadership and by the effect 
of our artillery and torpedo weapons. . . . 

The British indicate that the Pommern, which we reported lost, is not the 
ship of the line of 13,000 tons from the year 1905, but a modern dreadnought 
of the same name. We state that the total loss of the German high sea 
forces during the battle of May 31-June i, and the following time are: 
One battle cruiser, one ship of the line of older construction, four small 
cruisers, and five torpedo boats. Of these losses, the Poww^rw, launched in 
1905 ; the Wiesbaden, Elbing, Frauenlob, and five torpedo boats already have 
been reported in official statements. For military reasons, we refrained 
until now from making public the losses of the vessels Ltitzow and Rostock. 

In view of the wrong interpretation of this measure, and, moreover, 
in order to frustrate English legends about gigantic losses on our side, these 
reasons must no longer be regarded. Both ships were lost on the way to the 
harbor, to be repaired after attempts to keep the badly damaged vessels 
afloat had failed. The crews of both, including all the severely wounded, 
are safe. 

While the German list of losses is herewith closed, there are positive in- 
dications at hand that the actual British losses were materially higher than 
admitted. It has been established by us on the basis of our own obser- 
vations and of what has been made public, as well as from statements of 
British prisoners, that, in addition to the Warspite, the Princess Royal and 
Birmingham were destroyed. According to reliable reports, the dreadnought 
Marlborough also sank before reaching harbor. . . . 

Chief of the Admiralty Staff. 

To Jellicoe's assertion that Germany's losses were as great 
as those of Britain the Admiralty at Berlin retorted on June 
15 with the following definite figures : 

Against this we point out the comparison of losses officially published on 
the 7th, showing a total loss in tonnage of German war vessels of 60,720, 



ILLUSTRATIONS II7 

against the British loss of 117,150, where only those English vessels and 
destroyers were taken into account whose losses until now have been officially 
admitted on the English side. 

According to statements of English prisoners, further vessels were sunk, 
among them the dreadnought Warspite. 

No other German vessels were lost than those made public. They are the 
Lutzow, Pommern, Wiesbaden, Frauenlob, Elbing, Rostock, and five tor- 
pedo boats. This shows that the human losses to the English in the battle 
were considerably greater than the German. 

While from the English side the officer losses announced were 343 dead or 
missing and 51 wounded, our losses in officers, engineers, sanitary officers, 
paymasters, ensigns, and petty officers, are 172 dead or missing and 41 
wounded. 

The total losses among the English crews as far as published by the 
Admiralty are 6,104 dead or missing, 513 wounded. On the German side 
the losses are 2,414 dead or missing, 449 wounded. 

During and after the battle our vessels rescued 177 English, while up to 
now no German prisoners from this battle are known to be in English hands. 
The names of the English prisoners will be communicated to the British 
Government in the usual manner. 

An informal British account of the battle of Jutland in detail which 
appeared in " The Glasgow Herald " and which evidently has official au- 
thority behind it, runs as follows : 

First Phase, 3 : 30 p.m., May 31. — Beatty's battle cruisers, 
consisting of the Lion^ Princess Royal, Queen Mary, Tiger, 
Inflexible, Indomitable, Invincible, Indefatigable, and New 
Zealand, were on a southeasterly course, followed at about 
two miles distance by the four Queen Elizabeths. 

Enemy light cruisers were sighted, and shortly afterward 
the head of the German battle cruiser squadron, consisting 
of the new cruiser Hindenburg, the Seydlitz, Derfflinger, 
Lutzow, Moltke, and possibly the Salamis. 

Beatty at once began firing at a range of about 20,000 
yards, (twelve miles,) which shortened to 16,000 yards 
(nine miles) as the fleets closed. The Germans could see 
the British distinctly outlined against the light yellow sky. 



Il8 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

The Germans, covered by a haze, could be very indistinctly 
made out by our gunners. 

The Queen Elizabeths opened fire on one after another 
as they came within range. The German battle cruisers 
turned to port and drew away to about 20,000 yards. 

Second Phase, 4 : 40 p.m. — A destroyer screen then ap- 
peared beyond the German battle cruisers. The whole 
German High Seas Fleet could be seen approaching on the 
northeastern horizon in three divisions, coming to the sup- 
port of their battle cruisers. 

The German battle cruisers now turned right round 16 
points and took station in front of the battleships of the high 
fleet. 

Beatty with his battle cruisers and supporting battleships, 
therefore, had before him the whole of the German battle 
fleet, and Jellicoe was still some distance away. 

The opposing fleets were now moving parallel to one 
another in opposite directions, and but for a master manoeu- 
vre on the part of Beatty the British advance ships would 
have been cut off from Jellicoe's grand fleet. In order to 
avoid this and at the same time prepare the way so that 
Jellicoe might envelop his adversary, Beatty immediately 
also turned right around 16 points, so as to bring his ships 
parallel to the German battle cruisers and facing in the same 
direction. 

As soon as he was around he increased to full speed to get 
ahead of the Germans and take up a tactical position in ad- 
vance of their line. He was able to do this owing to the 
superior speed of our battle cruisers. 

Just before the turning point was reached, the Indefatigable 
sank, and the Queen Mary and the Invincible also were lost 
at the turning point, where, of course, the High Seas Fleet 
concentrated their fire. 

A little earlier, as the German battle cruisers were turning. 



ILLUSTRATIONS II 9 

the Queen Elizabeths had In similar manner concentrated 
their fire on the turning point and destroyed a new German 
battle cruiser, believed to be the Hindenhurg. 

Beatty had now got around and headed away with the loss 
of three ships, racing parallel to the German battle cruisers. 
The Queen Elizabeths followed behind, engaging the main 
High Seas Fleet. 

Third Phase, 5 p.m. — The Queen Elizabeths now turned 
short to port 16 points in order to follow Beatty. The War- 
spite jammed her steering gear, failed to get around, and 
drew the fire of six of the enemy, who closed in upon her. 

I am not surprised that the Germans claim her as a loss, 
since on paper she ought to have been lost, but as a matter 
of fact, though repeatedly straddled by shell fire with the 
water boihng up all around her, she was not seriously hit, and 
was able to sink one of her opponents. Her Captain re- 
covered control of the vessel, brought her around, and fol- 
lowed her consorts. 

In the meantime the Barham, Valiant, and Malaya turned 
short so as to avoid the danger spot where the Queen Mary 
and the Invincible had been lost, and for an hour until Jellicoe 
arrived fought a delaying action against the High Seas Fleet. 

The War spite joined them at about 5:15 o'clock, and all 
four ships were so successfully manoeuvred in order to upset 
the spotting corrections of their opponents that no hits of 
a seriously disabling character were suffered. They had 
the speed over their opponents by fully four knots, and 
were able to draw away from part of the long line of German 
battleships, which almost filled up the horizon. 

At this time the Queen Elizabeths were steadily firing at 
the flashes of German guns at a range which varied between 
12,000 and 15,000 yards, especially against those ships which 
were nearest them. The Germans were enveloped in a mist, 
and only smoke and flashes were visible. 



I20 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

By 5 : 45 half of the High Seas Fleet had been left out of 
range, and the Queen Elizabeths were steaming fast to join 
hands with Jellicoe. 

I must now return to Beatty's battle cruisers. They had 
succeeded in outflanking the German battle cruisers, which 
were, therefore, obliged to turn a full right angle to starboard 
to avoid being headed. 

Heavy fighting was renewed between the opposing battle 
cruiser squadrons, during which the Derfflinger was sunk; 
but toward 6 o'clock the German fire slackened very con- 
siderably, showing that Beatty's battle cruisers and the Queen 
Elizabeths had inflicted serious damage on their immediate 
opponents. 

Fourth Phase, 6 p.m. — The Grand Fleet was now in sight, 
and, coming up fast in three directions, the Queen Elizabeths 
altered their course four points to the starboard and drew 
in toward the enemy to allow Jellicoe room to deploy into 
line. 

The Grand Fleet was perfectly manoeuvred, and the very 
difiicult operation of deploying between the battle cruisers 
and the Queen Elizabeths was perfectly timed. 

Jellicoe came up, fell in behind Beatty's cruisers, and, 
followed by the damaged but still serviceable Queen Eliza- 
beths, steamed right across the head of the German fleet. 

The first of the ships to come into action were the Revenue 
and the Royal Oak with their fifteen-inch guns, and the 
Jgincourt, which fired from her seven turrets with the speed 
almost of a Maxim gun. 

The whole British fleet had now become concentrated. 
They had been perfectly manoeuvred, so as to "cross the 
T" of the High Seas Fleet, and, indeed, only decent light was 
necessary to complete their work of destroying the Germans 
in detail. The light did improve for a few minutes, and the 
conditions were favorable to the British fleet, which was 



ILLUSTRATIONS 121 

now in line approximately north and south across the head 
of the Germans. 

During the few minutes of good light Jellicoe smashed up 
the first three German ships, but the mist came down, 
visibility suddenly failed, and the defeated High Seas Fleet 
was able to draw off in ragged divisions. 

Fifth Phase, Night. — The Germans were followed by 
the British, who still had them enveloped between Jellicoe on 
the west, Beatty on the north, and Evan Thomas with his 
three Queen EHzabeths on the south. The Warspite had 
been sent back to her base. 

During the night our torpedo boat destroyers heavily at- 
tacked the German ships, and, although they lost seriously 
themselves, succeeded in sinking two of the enemy. 

Co-ordination of the units of the fleet was practically im- 
possible to keep up, and the Germans discovered by the 
rays of their searchlights the three Queen Elizabeths, not 
more than 4,000 yards away. Unfortunately they were 
then able to escape between the battleships and JelHcoe, 
since we were not able to fire, as our own destroyers were 
in the way. 

So ended the Jutland battle, which was fought as had 
been planned and very nearly a great success. It was spoiled 
by the unfavorable weather conditions, especially at the crit- 
ical moment, when the whole British fleet was concentrated 
and engaged in crushing the head of the German line. 

It was an action on our part of big guns, except of course 
for the destroyer work, since at a very early stage our big 
ships ceased to feel any anxiety from the German destroyers. 
The German small craft were rounded up by their British 
opponents and soon ceased to count as an organized body. 

A semi-official account of the battle of the Skagerrak, issued 
in Berlin on June 5, gives a very different version of certain 



122 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

aspects o) the fight, especially of the number of vessels engaged 
on both sides: 

The German High Seas Fleet had pushed out into the North 
Sea in the hope of engaging portions of the English fleet, 
which had recently been repeatedly reported off the Nor- 
wegian south coast. At 3 : 15 o'clock in the afternoon, some 
seventy miles off the Skagerrak, some small cruisers of the 
Calliope class were sighted. Our cruisers at once pursued 
the enemy, which fled northward at highest speed. 

At 5 : 20 o'clock our cruisers sighted two enemy columns 
to the west, consisting of six battle cruisers and a great 
number of small cruisers. The enemy passed toward the 
south, and our ships, approaching to nineteen kilometers, 
opened very effective fire' on south-southeastern courses. 
During the battle two English battle cruisers and one de- 
stroyer were sunk. 

After half an hour's fighting heavy enemy reinforcements, 
later observed to be five vessels of the Queen Elizabeth class, 
were sighted to the north. Soon afterward the German 
main force entered the fight, and the enemy at once turned 
north. 

The British commander, driving his ships at full speed, 
attempted to evade our extremely effective fire by taking 
an echelon formation. Our fleet followed at top speed the 
movements of the enemy. In the course of this period of 
the fighting one cruiser of the Achilles or Shannon class 
and two destroyers were sunk, while a number of other ves- 
sels suffered heavy damage. 

The battle against superior forces lasted until darkness 
fell. Besides numerous light detachments, at least twenty- 
five British battleships, six battle cruisers, and four armored 
cruisers engaged sixteen German battleships, five battle 
cruisers, six older ships of the line, and no armored cruisers. 

After dark our flotillas opened a night attack. During 



ILLUSTRATIONS 123 

this attack several cruiser and torpedo boat engagements 
occurred, resulting in the destruction of one battle cruiser, 
one cruiser of the Achilles class, probably two small cruisers, 
and at least ten destroyers. Six of the latter, including the 
new destroyer leaders, the Turbulent and the Tipperary, 
were destroyed by the leading vessels of our High Seas Fleet. 
The British squadron of older battleships, which hurried 
up from the south, did not arrive until Thursday morning, 
after the conclusion of the battle, and returned without tak- 
ing any part in the fighting or coming within sight of our 
main force. 

II 

ADMIRAL JELLICOE'S OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE 
BATTLE OF JUTLAND 

Vice Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's official report of the North 
Sea naval battle, which the British call the battle of Jutland 
and the Germans the battle of the Skagerrak, was made pub- 
lic on July 6. Even here the full list of ships and commanders 
is " withheld from publication for the present, in accordance 
with the usual practice." Following is the full text of all the 
vital portions of the document : 

The ships of the Grand Fleet, in pursuance of the general policy of period- 
ical sweeps through the North Sea, had left their base on the previous day 
in accordance with instructions issued by me. In the early afternoon of 
Wednesday, May 31, the first and second battle cruiser squadrons, the first, 
second, and third light cruiser squadrons, and destroyers from the first, 
ninth, tenth, and thirteenth flotillas, supported by the fifth battle squadron, 
were, in accordance with my directions, scouting to the southward of the 
battle fleet, which was accompanied by the third battle cruiser squadron, the 
first and second cruiser squadrons, the fourth light cruiser squadron, and the 
fourth, eleventh, and twelfth flotillas. 

The junction of the battle fleet with the scouting force after the enemy 
had been sighted was delayed owing to the southerly course steered by our 



124 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

advanced force during the first hour after commencing their action with the 
enemy battle cruisers. This, of course, was unavoidable, as had our battle 
cruisers not followed the enemy to the southward the main fleets would 
never have been in contact. 

The battle cruiser fleet, gallantly led by Vice Admiral Beatty, and admi- 
rably supported by the ships of the fifth battle squadron under Rear Admiral 
Evan-Thomas, fought the action under, at times, disadvantageous condi- 
tions, especially in regard to light, in a manner that was in keeping with 
the best traditions of the service. 

Admiral Jellicoe estimates the German losses at two bat- 
tleships of the dreadnought type, one of the Deutschland 
type, which was seen to sink; the battle cruiser Lutzow, 
admitted by the Germans, one battle cruiser of the dread- 
nought type, one battle cruiser seen to be so severely dam- 
aged that its return was extremely doubtful; five light 
cruisers, seen to sink — one of them possibly a battleship ; 
six destroyers seen to sink, three destroyers so damaged that 
it was doubtful if they would be able to reach port, and a 
submarine sunk. In concluding Admiral Jellicoe says : 

The conditions of low visibility under which the day action took place and 
the approach of darkness enhanced the difficulty of giving an accurate re- 
port of the damage inflicted or the names of the ships sunk by our forces. 
But after a most careful examination of the evidence of all the officers who 
testified to seeing enemy vessels actually sink, and personal interviews with 
a large number of these officers, I am of the opinion that the list shown in 
the inclosure gives the minimum numbers, though it is possible it is not ac- 
curate as regards the particular class of vessel, especially those which were 
sunk during the night attack. In addition to the vessels sunk, it is un- 
questionable that many other ships were very seriously damaged by gunfire 
and torpedo attack. 

The hardest fighting fell to the battle cruiser fleet, says 
Admiral Jellicoe, the units of which were less heavily armored 
than their opponents, and he expresses high appreciation of the 
handling of all the vessels and commends Admirals Burney, 
Jerram, Sturdee, Evan-Thomas, Duff, and Leveson, and 
continues : 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 25 

Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty once again showed his fine qualities of 
gallant leadership, firm determination, and correct strategic fighting. He 
appreciated situations at once on sighting the first enemy's lighter forces, 
then his battle cruisers, finally his battleships. I can. fully sympathize 
with his feelings when the evening mist and fading light robbed the fleet of 
that complete victory for which he had manoeuvred, for which the ves- 
sels in company with him had striven so hard. The services rendered by 
him, not only on this but on two previous occasions, have been of the very 
greatest value. 

Vice Admiral Beatty's report to Admiral Jellicoe particu- 
larly mentions the vi^ork of the Engadine, Commander Rob- 
inson, which towed the Warrior seventy-five miles during 
the night of May 31, and continues: 

It is impossible to give a definite statement of the losses inflicted on the 
enemy. Visibility was for the most part low and fluctuating. Caution for- 
bade me to close the range too much with my inferior force. A review of 
all the reports leads me to conclude that the enemy's losses were considerably 
greater than those we sustained in spite of their superiority, and included 
battleships, battle cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers. This is eloquent 
testimony to the very high standard of gunnery and torpedo efficiency of 
his Majesty's ships. The control and drill remained undisturbed through- 
out, in many cases, despite the heavy damage to material and personnel. 

Our superiority over the enemy in this respect was very marked, their 
eflftciency becoming rapidly reduced under punishment, while ours was main- 
tained throughout. As was to be expected, the behavior of the ships' com- 
panies under the terrible conditions of a modern sea battle was magnificent 
without exception. The strain on their morale was a severe test of dis- 
cipline and training. The officers and men were imbued with one thought 
— a desire to defeat the enemy. 

Extracts from Vice Admiral Beatty's report give the 
course of events before the battle fleet came on the scene of 
action. At 2 : 20 o'clock in the afternoon the Galatea re- 
ported the presence of enemy vessels. At 2:35 o'clock 
considerable smoke was sighted to the eastward. This 
made it clear that the enemy was to the northward and 
eastward, and that it would be impossible for him to round 



126 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Horn Reef without being brought to action. The course 
of the British ships consequently was altered to the east- 
ward, and subsequently northeastward. 

The enemy was sighted at 3 : 3 1 o'clock. His force con- 
sisted of five battle cruisers. Vice Admiral Beatty's first 
and third light cruiser squadrons, without awaiting orders, 
spread eastward, forming a screen in advance of the battle 
cruiser squadron under Admiral Evan-Thomas, consisting 
of four battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class. The light 
cruisers engaged the enemy ; and the cruiser squadron came 
up at high speed, taking station ahead of the battle cruisers. 
At 3 : 30 o'clock Vice Admiral Beatty increased the speed to 
25 knots and formed the line of battle, the second battle 
cruiser squadron forming astern of the first, with two de- 
stroyer flotillas ahead. 

Vice Admiral Beatty then turned east-southeast slightly, 
converging on the enemy now at a range of 23,000 yards. 
The fifth battle cruiser squadron was then bearing north- 
northwest 10,000 yards distant. The visibility was good. 
Continuing his report, Vice Admiral Beatty said : 

The sun was behind us. The wind was southeast. Being between the 
enemy and his base, our situation was both tactically and strategically good. 

Both forces opened fire simultaneously at 3 : 48 at a range of 18,500 yards. 
The course was altered southward, the enemy steering parallel, distant 
18,000 to 14,500 yards. The fifth battle squadron opened fire at a range 
of 20,000 yards at 4 : 08. The enemy fire then seemed to slacken. Although 
the presence of destroyers caused inconvenience on account of smoke, they 
preserved the battleships from submarine attack. 

Two submarines being sighted, and a flotilla of ten destroyers being 
ordered to attack the enemy with torpedoes, they moved out at 4 : 15 o'clock 
simultaneously with the approach of German destroyers. The attack 
was carried out gallantly with great determination. Before arriving at a 
favorable position to fire torpedoes they intercepted an enemy force con- 
sisting of one light cruiser and fifteen destroyers. A fierce engagement at 
close quarters ensued, and the enemy was forced to retire on their battle- 
ships, having two destroyers sunk and their torpedo attack frustrated. Our 



ILLUSTRATIONS 127 

destroyers sustained no loss, but the attack on the enemy cruisers was ren- 
dered less effective. 

The Nestor, Nomad, and Mineator, under Commander Edward Bing- 
ham, pressed the attack on the battle cruisers and fired two torpedoes. 
Being subjected to a heavy fire at 3,000 yards, the Nomad wa.^ badly hit 
and remained between the lines. The Nestor also was badly hit, but was 
afloat when last seen. The Petard, Nerissa, Turbulent, and Termagant 
also are praised. 

These destroyer attacks were indicative of the spirit pervading the navy 
and worthy of its highest traditions. 

From 4:15 to 4 : 43 o'clock the conflict between the 
battle cruiser squadrons was fierce, and the resolute British 
fire began to tell. The rapidity and accuracy of the Ger- 
mans' fire depreciated considerably. The third German ship 
was seen to be afire. The German battle fleet was reported 
ahead, and the destroyers were recalled. 

Vice Admiral Beatty altered his course to the northward 
to lead the Germans toward the British battle fleet. The 
second light cruiser squadron closed to 13,000 yards of the 
German battle fleet and came under heavy but inefl"ective 
fire. The fifth battle squadron engaged the German battle 
cruisers with all guns, and about 5 o'clock came under the 
fire of the leading ships of the German battle fleet. 

The weather became unfavorable, Vice Admiral Beatty's 
ships being silhouetted against a clear horizon to the Ger- 
mans, whose ships were mostly obscured by mist. 

Between 5 and 6 o'clock the action continued at 14,000 
yards on a northerly course, the German ships receiving very 
severe punishment, one battle cruiser quitting the line con- 
siderably damaged. At 5:35 o'clock the Germans were 
gradually hauling eastward and receiving severe punish- 
ment at the head of the line, probably acting on informa- 
tion from their light cruisers which were engaged with the 
third battle cruiser squadron or from Zeppelins which pos- 
sibly were present. 



128 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

At 5 : 56 o'clock the leading ships of the British battle 
fleet were sighted bearing north, distant five miles. Vice 
Admiral Beatty thereon proceeded east at the greatest 
speed, bringing the range to 12,000 yards. Only three 
German battle cruisers were then visible, followed by battle- 
ships of the Konig type. 

Vice Admiral Jellicoe then takes up the story of the battle 
fleet. Informed that the Germans were sighted, the fleet pro- 
ceeded at full speed on a southeast by south course during 
two hours before arriving on the scene of the battle. The 
steaming qualities of the older ships were severely tested. 
When the battle fleet was meeting the battle cruisers and 
the fifth battle squadron, great care was necessary to insure 
that the British ships were not mistaken for the German war- 
ships. 

Vice Admiral Beatty reported the position of the German 
battle fleet at 6:15 o'clock. Vice Admiral Jellicoe then 
formed the line of battle, Vice Admiral Beatty meantime 
having formed the battle cruisers ahead of the battle fleet ; 
and the fleets became engaged. During the deployment 
the Defense and Warrior were seen passing between the 
British and German fleets under heavy fire. The Defense 
disappeared ; and the Warrior passed to the rear, disabled. 

Vice Admiral Jellicoe considers it probable that Sir Robert 
K. Arbuthnot, the Rear Admiral who was lost on board the 
Defense, was not aware, during the engagement with the 
German light cruisers, of the approach of their heavy ships, 
owing to the mist, until he found himself in close proximity 
to the main German fleet. Before he could withdraw, his 
ships were caught under a heavy fire and disabled. When 
the Black Prince of the same squadron was sunk is not known, 
but a wireless signal was received from her between 8 and 
9 o'clock. 

Owing principally to the mist, it was possible to see only 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 29 

a few ships at a time. Toward the close of the battle only- 
four or five were visible, and never more than eight to twelve. 

The third battle cruiser squadron, under. Rear Admiral 
Horace Alexander Hood, was in advance of the battle fleet 
and ordered to reinforce Vice Admiral Beatty. While en 
route the Chester, Captain Lawson, engaged three or four 
German light cruisers for twenty minutes. Despite many 
casualties, her steaming qualities were unimpaired. 

Describing the work of the third squadron, Vice Admiral 
Beatty said Rear Admiral Hood brought it into action ahead 
of the Lion "in the most inspiring manner, worthy of his 
great naval ancestors." Vice Admiral Hood, at 6 : 25 p.m., 
was only 8,000 yards from the leading German ship, and 
the British vessels poured a hot fire into her and caused her 
to turn away. Vice Admiral Beatty, continuing, reports : 

By 6 : 50 o'clock the battle cruisers were clear of our leading battle 
squadron, and I ordered the third battle cruiser squadron to prolong the line 
astern, and reduced the speed to eighteen knots. The visibility at this time 
was very indifferent, not more than four miles, and the enemy ships were 
temporarily lost sight of after 6 p.m. Although the visibility became re- 
duced, it undoubtedly was more favorable to us than to the enemy. At 
intervals their ships showed up clearly, enabling us to punish them very 
severely and to establish a definite superiority over them. It was clear 
that the enemy suffered considerable damage, battle cruisers and battleships 
alike. The head of their line was crumpled up, leaving their battleships 
as a target for the majority of our battle cruisers. Before leaving, the fifth 
battle squadron was also engaging battleships. 

The report of Rear Admiral Evan-Thomas shows excellent results were 
obtained. It can safely be said that his magnificent squadron wrought 
great execution. 

The action between the battle fleets lasted, intermittently, 
from 6:17 to 8:20 o'clock at ranges between 9,000 and 
12,000 yards. The Germans constantly turned away and 
opened the range under the cover of destroyer attacks and 
smoke screens as the effect of the British fire was felt; and 



130 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

alterations of the course from southeast by east to west in 
an endeavor to close up brought the British battle fleet, which 
commenced action in an advantageous position on the 
Germans' bow, to a quarterly bearing from the German battle 
line, but placed Vice Admiral Jellicoe between the Germans 
and their bases. 

Vice Admiral Jellicoe says : "During the somewhat brief 
periods that the ships of the High Sea Fleet were visible 
through the mist, a heavy and effective fire kept up by the 
battleships and battle cruisers of the Grand Fleet caused 
me much satisfaction. The enemy vessels were seen to be 
constantly hit, some being observed to haul out of the line. 
At least one sank. The enemy's return fire at this period 
was not effective, and the damage caused to our ships was in- 
significant." 

Vice Admiral Beatty's report covering this period says the 
German ships he was engaging showed signs of punishment. 
The visibility improved at sunset at 7:17, when he re-en- 
gaged, and destroyers at the head of the German line emitted 
volumes of gray smoke, covering their capital ships as with a 
pall, under cover of which they turned away and disappeared. 
At 7 : 45 the light cruiser squadrons, sweeping westward, 
located two German battleships and cruisers. At 8 : 20 
Vice Admiral Beatty heavily engaged them at 10,000 yards. 
The leading ship, being repeatedly hit by the Lion, turned 
away in flames with a heavy list. The Princess Royal set 
fire to a three-funneled battleship. The New Zealand and 
Indomitable reported that the ship they engaged left the line 
heeling over and afire. At 8 : 40 the battle cruisers felt a 
heavy shock as if struck by a mine or torpedo. This was 
assumed to be a vessel blowing up. 

Vice Admiral Beatty reported that he did not consider it 
desirable or proper to engage the German battle fleet during 
the dark hours, as the strategical position made it appear 



ILLUSTRATIONS I3I 

certain he could locate them at daylight under most fa- 
vorable circumstances. 

Vice Admiral Jellicoe reports that, as anticipated, the 
Germans appeared to have relied much upon torpedo at- 
tacks, which were favored by low visibility and by the fact 
that the British were in the position of a following or chasing 
fleet. Of the large number of torpedoes apparently fired 
only one took effect, and this was upon the Marlborough, 
which was able to continue in action. The efforts of the Ger- 
mans to keep out of effective gun range were aided, he says, 
by weather ideal for that purpose. The Germans made two 
separate destroyer attacks. The first battle squadron at 
11,000 yards administered severe punishment to battleships, 
battle cruisers, and light cruisers. The fire of the Marlborough 
was particularly effective and rapid. She commenced by 
firing seven salvos at a ship of the Kaiser class, and then 
engaged a cruiser and next a battleship. The Marlborough 
was hit by a torpedo at 6 : 54 p.m., and took a con- 
siderable list to starboard, but reopened fire at 7 : 03 at a 
cruiser. At 7:12 she fired fourteen rapid salvos at a 
cruiser of the Konig class, hitting her frequently until she 
left the line. 

During the action the range decreased to 5,000 yards. 
The first battle squadron received more of the enemy's fire 
than the remainder of the fleet, excepting the fifth squadron. 
The Colossus was hit, but not seriously. 

The fourth squadron, led by the flagship Iron Duke, en- 
gaged a squadron consisting of the Konig and Kaiser classes 
with battle cruisers and light cruisers. The British fire was 
effective, although a mist rendered range-taking difficult. 
The Iron Duke fired on a battleship of the Konig class at 
12,000 yards. The hitting commenced at the second salvo, 
and only ceased when the target turned away. Other 
ships of the squadron fired principally at German ships as 



132 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

they appeared out of the mist, and several of the^ German 
vessels were hit. 

The second squadron under Admiral Jerram engaged ves- 
sels of the Kaiser or Konig classes and also a battle cruiser, 
which apparently was severely damaged. A squadron under 
the command of Rear Admiral Heath, with the cruiser Duke 
of Edinburgh, acted as a connecting link between the battle 
fleet and the battle cruiser fleet, but did not get into 
action. 

The German vessels were entirely out of the fight at 9 
o'clock, says the report. The threat of destroyer attacks 
during the rapidly approaching darkness made It necessary 
to dispose of the fleet with a view to Its safety, while pro- 
viding for a renewal of action at daylight. Vice Admiral 
Jellicoe manoeuvred the fleet so as to remain between the 
Germans and their bases, placing flotillas of destroyers where 
they could protect the fleet and attack the heavy German 
ships. 

The British heavy ships were not attacked during the 
night, but three British destroyer flotillas delivered a series 
of gallant and successful attacks, causing heavy losses. The 
fourth flotilla, under Captain Wintour, suff"ered severe losses, 
including the Tipperary. The twelfth flotilla, under Cap- 
tain Stirling, attacked a squadron of six large vessels of the 
Kaiser class, taking it by surprise and firing many torpedoes. 
The second, third, and fourth ships in the line were hit, and 
the third blew up. The destroyers were under a heavy fire 
of German light cruisers. Only the Onslaught received 
material Injuries. The Castor sank a German destroyer at 
point-blank range. 

The thirteenth flotilla, under Captain Farle, was stationed 
astern of the battle fleet. A large vessel crossed In the rear 
of the flotilla after midnight at high speed. Turning on her 
searchlights, she fired heavily on the Petard and the Turbu- 



ILLUSTRATIONS I33 

lent, and the latter was disabled. The Champion was en- 
gaged for a few minutes with four German destroyers, while 
the Moresby fired a torpedo at a ship of the Deutschland 
class and felt an explosion. 

Concluding his account of the battle, Vice Admiral Jellicoe 
wrote : 

At daylight on the first of June the battle fleet, being southward of Horn 
Reef, turned northward in search of the enemy vessels and for the purpose 
of collecting our own cruisers and torpedo boat destroyers. The visibility 
early on the first of June was three to four miles less than on May 3 1 ; and the 
torpedo boat destroyers, being out of visual touch, did not rejoin the fleet 
until 9 A.M. The British fleet remained in the proximity of the battlefield 
and near the line of approach to the German ports until 11 a.m., in spite of 
the disadvantage of long distances from fleet bases and the danger incurred 
in waters adjacent to the enemy's coasts from submarines and torpedo craft. 

The enemy, however, made no sign, and I was reluctantly compelled to 
the conclusion that the High Sea Fleet had returned into port. Subse- 
quent events proved this assumption to have been correct. Our position 
must have been known to the enemy, as at 4 a.m. the fleet engaged a Zep- 
pelin about five minutes, during which time she had ample opportunity to 
note and subsequently report the position and course of the British fleet. 

The waters from the latitude of Horn Reef to the scene of action were 
thoroughly searched, and some survivors from the destroyers Ardent, Fortune ^ 
and Tipperary were picked up. The Sparrow Hawk, which had been in 
collision, was no longer seaworthy and was sunk after the crew was taken 
off. A large amount of wreckage was seen, but no enemy ships ; and at 
1:15, it being evident that the German fleet had succeeded in returning to 
port, our course was shaped for our bases, which were reached without fur- 
ther incident on Friday, June 2. 

The cruiser squadron was detached to search for the Warrior, which 
had been abandoned while in tow of the Engadine on the way to the base, 
owing to bad weather setting in and the vessel becoming unseaworthy. No 
trace of her was discovered, and subsequent search by the light cruiser 
squadron having failed to locate her, it was evident she had foundered. 

The fleet was fueled, replenished its ammunition, and at 9 : 30 p.m., on 
June 2, was reported ready for further action. 

Two estimates of the total tonnage lost by the Germans 
in the Jutland battle have been made by British officials. 



134 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

The more conservative one, who included in his list only- 
vessels "seen to sink" and based his estimate on the theory 
that the battleships sunk were of the oldest dreadnought 
type, gives the German tonnage lost as 109,220, as com- 
pared with a British loss in tonnage of 112,350. He con- 
cludes that the Germans lost two battleships of the dread- 
nought type of 18,900 tons each, one of the Deutschland 
type of 13,200 tons, the battle cruiser Liltzow of 28,000 tons, 
five cruisers of the Rostock type, making a total of 24,500 
tons for this type ; six destroyers, aggregating 4,920 tons, 
and one submarine of 800 tons. 

The more liberal estimate places the German loss at 1 17,220 
tons, as follows : 

One dreadnought of the Kronprinz type, 25,480 tons; 
one of the Heligoland type, 22,440 tons ; battleship Pom- 
mem^ 13,000 tons; battle cruiser Liltzow, 28,000 tons; five 
Rostocks, aggregating 24,500 tons ; destroyers aggregating 
4,000 tons, and a submarine of 800 tons. 



HI 

FROM THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND ANALYZED 

BY ADMIRAL SIR CYPRIAN BRIDGE 

British Naval Veteran and Expert 

Interesting evidence of the decisive character of the 
victory is shown by the fact that during the month of June 
the British vessels which had been shut up in the Baltic 
since the beginning of the war have been returning day 
after day to British ports. This shows that the Germans 
have less control than ever of the seas. 



ILLUSTRATIONS I3S 

FROM NAVAL LOSSES OF BRITAIN AND GER- 
MANY 

BY ARCHIBALD KURD 

Naval Expert of The London Telegraph 

It is now known that the battle cruiser Seydlitz was run 
ashore to save her from sinking ; she is practically a wreck, 
and useless for months, if not forever, but has been got into 
port. It is asserted by travelers who have returned to 
Amsterdam that the battle cruiser Derfflinger sank "on being 
towed into Wilhelmshaven," and it is reported from Copen- 
hagen that the Pommern was not the battleship which was 
torpedoed in the Baltic by a British submarine in July last, 
but a new battle cruiser which, after that battleship had 
disappeared, was named, for territorial reasons, after the 
German State, thus perpetuating its association with the 
navy. The story of the sinking of the dreadnought battle- 
ship Ostfriesland awaits confirmation. 



GERMAN ADMIRALTY'S OFFICIAL REPORT OF 
BATTLE OF THE SKAGERRAK 

The German Admiralty issued a report June 29 on the battle of the 
Skagerrak. In consequence of the mail blockade, the full ofHcial document 
has not reached this country, but the abstract printed below, which was 
officially furnished for transmission by wire, is comprehensive. 

The High Sea Fleet, consisting of three battleship squad- 
rons, five battle cruisers, and a large number of small cruisers, 
with several destroyer flotillas, was cruising in the Skager- 
rak on May 31 for the purpose, as on earlier occasions, of 
offering battle to the British fleet. The vanguard of small 
cruisers at 4 : 30 o'clock in the afternoon (German time) sud- 
denly encountered ninety miles west of Hanstholm, (a cape 



136 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

on the northwest coast of Jutland,) a group of eight of the 
newest cruisers of the Calliope class and fifteen or twenty 
of the most modern destroyers. 

While the German light forces and the first cruiser squad- 
ron under Vice Admiral Hipper were following the British, 
who were retiring northwestward, the German battle cruisers 
sighted to the westward Vice Admiral Beatty's battle cruiser 
squadron of six ships, including four of the Lion type and 
two of the Indefatigable type. Beatty's squadron developed 
a battle line on a southeasterly course, and Vice Admiral 
Hipper formed his line ahead of the same general course and 
approached for a running fight. He opened fire at 5 : 49 
o'clock in the afternoon with heavy artillery at a range of 
13,000 meters against the superior enemy. The weather 
was clear and light, and the sea was light with a northwest 
wind. 

After about a quarter of an hour a violent explosion 
occurred on the last cruiser of the Indefatigable type. It was 
caused by a heavy shell, and destroyed the vessel. 

About 6 : 20 o'clock in the afternoon five warships of the 
Queen Elizabeth type came from the west and joined the 
British battle cruiser line, powerfully reinforcing with their 
fifteen-inch guns the five British battle cruisers remaining 
after 6 : 20 o'clock. To equalize this superiority Vice Ad- 
miral Hipper ordered the destroyers to attack the enemy. 
The British destroyers and small cruisers interposed, and a 
bitter engagement at close range ensued, in the course of 
which a light cruiser participated. 

The Germans lost two torpedo boats, the crews of which 
were rescued by sister ships under a heavy fire. Two British 
destroyers were sunk by artillery, and two others — the 
Nestor and Nomad — remained on the scene in a crippled 
condition. These later were destroyed by the main fleet 
after German torpedo boats had rescued all the survivors. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 37 

While this engagement was in progress a mighty explosion, 
caused by a big shell, broke the Queen Mary, the third ship 
in line, asunder at 6 : 30 o'clock. 

Soon thereafter the German main battleship fleet was 
sighted to the southward, steering north. The hostile fast 
squadrons thereupon turned northward, closing the first part 
of the fight, which lasted about an hour. 

The British retired at high speed before the German fleet, 
which followed closely. The German battle cruisers con- 
tinued the artillery combat with increasing intensity, par- 
ticularly with the division of the vessels of the Queen Eliz- 
abeth type, and in this the leading German battleship di- 
vision participated intermittently. The hostile ships showed 
a desire to run in a flat curve ahead of the point of our line 
and to cross it. 

At 7 : 45 o'clock in the evening British small cruisers and 
destroyers launched an attack against our battle cruisers, 
who avoided the torpedoes by manoeuvring, while the 
British battle cruisers retired from the engagement, in which 
they did not participate further, as far as can be established. 
Shortly thereafter a German reconnoitring group, which was 
parrying the destroyer attack, received an attack from the 
northeast. The cruiser Wiesbaden was soon put out of 
action in this attack. The German torpedo flotillas im- 
mediately attacked the heavy ships. 

Appearing shadow-like from the haze bank to the north- 
east was made out a long line of at least twenty-five battle- 
ships, which at first sought a junction with the British 
battle cruisers and those of the Queen EHzabeth type on a 
northwesterly to westerly course and then turned on an 
easterly to a southeasterly course. 

With the advent of the British main fleet, whose centre 
consisted of three squadrons of eight battleships each, with 
a fast division of three battle cruisers of the Invincible type 



138 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

on the northern end, and three of the newest vessels of the 
Royal Sovereign class, armed with fifteen-inch guns, at the 
southern end, there began about 8 o'clock in the evening 
the third section of the engagement, embracing the combat 
between the main fleets. 

Vice Admiral Scheer determined to attack the British main 
fleet, which, he now recognized, was completely assembled 
and about doubly superior. The German battleship squad- 
rons, headed by battle cruisers, steered first toward the 
extensive haze bank to the northeast, where the crippled 
cruiser Wiesbaden was still receiving a heavy fire. Around 
the Wiesbaden stubborn individual fights under quickly 
changing conditions now occurred. 

The light enemy forces, supported by an armored cruiser 
squadron of five ships of the Minatour, Achilles, and Duke 
of Edinburgh classes coming from the northeast, were en- 
countered and apparently surprised on account of the 
decreasing visibility by our battle cruisers and leading 
battleship division. The squadron came under a violent 
and heavy fire, by which the small cruisers Defense and 
Black Prince were sunk. The cruiser Warrior regained its 
own line a wreck and later sank. Another small cruiser 
was damaged severely. 

Two destroyers already had fallen victims to the attack 
of German torpedo boats against the leading British bat- 
tleships, and a small cruiser and two destroyers were dam- 
aged. The German battle cruisers and leading battleship 
division had in these engagements come under increased 
fire of the enemy's battleship squadron, which, shortly after 
eight o'clock, could be made out in the haze turning to the 
northeastward and finally to the east. Germans observed, 
amid the artillery combat and shelling of great intensity, 
signs of the effect of good shooting between 8 : 20 and 8 : 30 
o'clock particularly. Several ofiicers on German ships ob- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 39 

served that a battleship of the Queen Elizabeth class blew up 
under conditions similar to that of the Queen Mary. The 
Invincible sank after being hit severely. *A ship of the 
Iron Duke class had earlier received a torpedo hit, and one 
of the Queen Elizabeth class was running around in a circle, 
its steering apparatus apparently having been hit. 

The Lutzozv was hit by at least fifteen heavy shells and 
was unable to maintain its place in line. Vice Admiral 
Hipper, therefore, transshipped to the Moltke on a torpedo 
boat and under a heavy fire. The Derfflinger meantime 
took the lead temporarily. Parts of the German torpedo 
flotilla attacked the enemy's main fleet and heard detonations. 
In the action the Germans lost a torpedo boat. An enemy 
destroyer was seen in a sinking condition, having been hit by 
a torpedo. 

After the first violent onslaught into the mass of the su- 
perior enemy the opponents lost sight of each other in the 
smoke by powder clouds. After a short cessation in the 
artillery combat Vice Admiral Scheer ordered a new attack 
by all the available forces. 

German battle cruisers, which with several light cruisers 
and torpedo boats again headed the line, encountered the 
enemy soon after 9 o'clock and renewed the heavy fire, 
which was answered by them from the mist, and then by the 
leading division of the main fleet. Armored cruisers now 
flung themselves in a reckless onset at extreme speed against 
the enemy line in order to cover the attack of torpedo boats. 
They approached the enemy line, although covered with 
shot from 6,000 meters distance. Several German torpedo 
flotillas dashed forward to attack, delivered torpedoes, and 
returned, despite the most severe counterfire, with the loss 
of only one boat. The bitter artillery fight was again in- 
terrupted, after this second violent onslaught, by the smoke 
from guns and funnels. 



140 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Several torpedo flotillas, which were ordered to attack 
somewhat later, found, after penetrating the smoke cloud, 
that the enemy fleet was no longer before them ; nor, when 
the fleet commander again brought the German squadrons 
upon the southerly and southwesterly course, where the 
enemy was last seen, could our opponents be found. Only 
once more — shortly before lo : 30 o'clock — did the battle 
flare up. For a short time in the late twilight German 
battle cruisers sighted four enemy capital ships to seaward 
and opened fire immediately. As the two German battle- 
ship squadrons attacked, the enemy turned and vanished 
in the darkness. Older German light cruisers of the fourth 
reconnoissance group also were engaged with the older enemy 
armored cruisers in a short fight. This ended the day 
battle. 

The German divisions, which, after losing sight of the 
enemy, began a night cruise in a southerly direction, were 
attacked until dawn by enemy light force in rapid succes- 
sion. 

The attacks were favored by the general strategic situ- 
ation and the particularly dark night. 

The cruiser Frauenloh was injured severely during the 
engagement of the fourth reconnoissance group with a su- 
perior cruiser force, and was lost from sight. 

One armored cruiser of the Cressy class suddenly appeared 
close to a German battleship and was shot into fire after 
forty seconds, and sank in four minutes. 

The Florent, ( ?) Destroyer 60, (the names were hard to 
decipher in the darkness and therefore were uncertainly 
established,) and four destroyers — 3, 78, 06, and 27 — 
were destroyed by our fire. One destroyer was cut in two 
by the ram of a German battleship. Seven destroyers, 
including the G-30, were hit and severely damaged. These, 
including the Tipperary and Turbulent^ which, after saving 



ILLUSTRATIONS I4I 

survivors, were left behind in a sinking condition, drifted 
past our line, some of them burning at the bow or stern. 

The tracks of countless torpedoes were sighted by the 
German ships, but only the Pommern (a battleship) fell 
an immediate victim to a torpedo. The cruiser Rostock 
was hit, but remained afloat. The cruiser Elbing was 
damaged by a German battleship during an unavoidable 
manoeuvre. After vain endeavors to keep the ship afloat 
the Elbing was blown up, but only after her crew had em- 
barked on torpedo boats. A post torpedo boat was struck 
by a mine laid by the enemy. 

[The report closes with a summary of the German losses 
as already published.] 



GERMAN OFFICIAL ACCOUNT, BASED ON 
STATEMENTS OF BRITISH PRISONERS 

A supplementary narrative of the battle of the Skagerrak, in the 
form of a telegram based on statements of lyy British prisoners^ 
was transmitted officially on June 20 by the German Admiralty. 
The text is as follows : 

The British forces participating In the battle were the 
reconnoitring forces under Vice Admiral Beatty and the 
main body of the British Navy under Admiral Jellicoe. 
The reconnoitring forces comprised six battle cruisers — 
the flagship Lion^ the Queen Mary, the Princess Royal, and 
the Tiger as the first division, and the Indefatigable and the 
flagship New Zealand as the second division. The first di- 
vision was complete, but H. M. S. Australia of the second 
division was absent for secret reasons. Besides these 
ships, there were under Beatty's command five swift bat- 
tleships of the Queen Elizabeth type and a large number of 
small modern cruisers, the names of thirteen of which were 



142 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

verified by each of the prisoners. There were also two de- 
stroyer flotillas, comprising about forty destroyers, among 
which were the most modern types. 

The main body of the fleet engaged in the battle was com- 
posed of three battleship squadrons of from six to eight 
dreadnoughts each, one special squadron of three of the most 
modern battleships of the Royal Sovereign type, one division 
formed by the battle cruisers Invincible, Indomitable, and 
Inflexible, a squadron of armored cruisers comprising six ships, 
and at least ten small cruisers and four flotillas of from eighty 
to one hundred destroyers. 

When Beatty sighted the German reconnoitring forces 
to the east he formed a middle line with his six battle cruisers 
and turned southeast. The ships of the Queen EHzabeth 
type also turned southeast and attempted to join the battle 
cruisers. Between 5 and 6 o'clock in the afternoon the 
Germans opened fire at a distance of about eighteen kilo- 
meters, [approximately eleven miles.] Shortly after 6 o'clock 
a huge explosion occurred on board the Queen Mary, mid- 
ships, on the port side. Two other explosions followed, and 
the forward part of the ship sank rapidly. At the fourth and 
most severe explosion the entire ship sank. This was the 
work of from only five to ten minutes. 

Scarcely had the Indefatigable arrived on the scene of the 
accident when she was also shaken by an explosion. The 
ship capsized and sank so quickly that of the fourteen men 
who were in the fighting top only two were rescued. These 
two are apparently the only survivors of the Indefatigable^ s 
crew of about 1,000. After the sinking of these two ships 
Admiral Beatty signaled to the Thirteenth British flotilla 
to attack the German battle cruisers. The order was un- 
derstood only by the nearest destroyers and was regarded 
by several of the prisoners as a desperate resort. In this 
attack the most modern British destroyers, the Nestor and 



ILLUSTRATIONS 143 

the Nomad, were sunk. Their crews were later rescued from 
rafts and Hfeboats by German torpedo boats. 

In the meanwhile, the ships of the Queen" Elizabeth type 
approached. The distance between the British ships and 
the German cruisers had diminished to ten kilometers, [ap- 
proximately six miles.] The British battle cruisers steamed 
northward at high speed and were soon out of range. The 
Queen Elizabeth type ships continued battle, turning north- 
ward in order to "cut off the enemy," as ordered by Beatty. 
Soon one of the Queen Elizabeth type ships left the British 
line with a heavy list. The prisoners state expressly that 
it was the Warspite. The wireless sent by the Turbulent 
that the Warspite was sunk was intercepted by about eight 
British destroyers. 

The rescued prisoners disagree as to the time of Admiral 
Jellicoe's arrival with the main body of the fleet. Prisoners 
from Jellicoe's fleet state that they were steaming south- 
ward in several columns when they received Beatty's first 
wireless transmitted by the small cruiser Galatea. There- 
upon Jellicoe gave the order to continue southward at top 
speed. The prisoners saw only the flames from Beatty's 
artillery when Jellicoe turned north and formed a line toward 
the northwest and west. The battle cruisers of the main 
body, the Invincible, the Indomitable, and the Inflexible, 
were ahead with the armored cruisers. At this time the 
British battleship Marlborough was hit by a torpedo which 
is said to have been fired by a submarine. If so, the sub- 
marine must have been British, since there were no German 
submarines in the battle. 

A British armored cruiser attacked a large isolated German 
ship which steered slowly southward. At the same time 
the British main body opened fire. When the armored 
cruisers returned to the main body, the Defense was missing. 
By this time the Warrior had large holes midships just above 



144 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the waterline. Shortly after the British main body entered 
the battle a German shot set fire to the Invincible, an ex- 
plosion followed, and the ship sank. The Germans shot at 
long range and annihilated the destroyer Acasta, standing 
near the head of the line. The reports of other prisoners 
about the movements of the British main body until dark 
conflict. The point on which they agree is that at dark the 
British Navy steered northward in columns. The destroyer 
Tipperary asked permission to turn southward alone to at- 
tack the Germans. Permission was granted, but she en- 
countered the German flotilla and was defeated and sunk. 
The survivors were rescued by the Germans. Beatty's 
thirteenth flotilla had failed to join the battle cruisers and 
turned southward at dark. It encountered several large 
ships which it mistook for British. The Germans opened 
fire and destroyed the Turbulent. All the officers and a part 
of the crew were lost. The survivors were rescued by 
German torpedo boats. 

Almost all the British prisoners expressed dissatisfaction 
at the fact that the British made no effort to rescue them 
although almost all the best British ships participated in 
the battle. The survivors of the Queen Mary and of the 
Indefatigable had been in the water for almost four hours 
before they were rescued by the Germans. They had 
already given up all hope, for nothing had been seen of the 
British ships for hours. 



VIVID STORY OF AN EYEWITNESS 

By a British Naval Officer 

We, the fast battleships, were, as has already been stated, 
astern of the battle cruisers and had opened fire between ten 
and twenty minutes of their first shots. Now we all of us 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 45 

got going hard, the battle cruisers and ourselves against the 
German battle cruisers and the German High Sea Fleet, 
which had now put in an appearance. So, in spite of the 
stories of the Germans, they were most undoubtedly con- 
siderably superior to the British force present, and remained 
so until the arrival of the Grand Fleet some hours later, 
and yet, in spite of this overwhelming superiority, they only 
succeeded at this stage of the battle in sinking two of our 
big ships at a huge cost to themselves, because there can be 
little doubt that up to then they got as good as they gave 
and a bit more. 

The firing now became very general indeed, and the con- 
tinued roar and shriek of our own guns, coupled with one's 
work, left little opportunity to think about outside matters. 
The only predominant thing I, in common with others, 
remember was the rapid bang, bang, bang of our smaller 
secondary armament, as we thought; but during a lull we 
discovered that this was the German shell bursting on the 
water all round the ship with so loud an explosion that it 
could be heard right deep down in the heart of the ship. 
We were at this time receiving a very heavy fire indeed, our 
own battle cruisers having become disengaged for twenty 
minutes to half an hour, so that the fire of the whole Ger- 
man fleet was concentrated on us. However, we stuck it, 
and gave back a good deal, I fancy. 

Especially unpleasant, though, was a period of half an hour 
during which we were unable to see the enemy, while they 
could see us most clearly. Thus we were unable to fire a 
shot and had to rest content with steaming through a tornado 
of shell fire without loosing off a gun, which was somewhat 
trying. However, about 6:30 the sun silhouetted up the 
Germans and completely turned the tables as far as light was 
concerned, and for a period of some twenty minutes we 
gave them a most terrific dressing down, which we trust they 



146 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

will remember. Then down came the mist again, and we 
had to close them right down to four miles in the attempt to 
see the enemy, and four miles is, of course, about as near as 
one likes to get to the foe, as torpedoes then come into play. 

It was at this stage that, owing to some temporary defect, 
the Warspite^s helm jammed, and she went straight at 
the enemy into a hell of fire. She looked a most wonderful 
sight, every gun firing for all it was worth in reply. Luckily 
she got under control quickly and returned to the line, and 
it was this incident that gave rise to the German legend 
that she had been sunk. 

The action continued with unabated fury until the arrival 
of the Grand Fleet somewhere about 7. It was just before 
this that the Invincible had met her fate, as also the Defense 
and Black Prince — the two latter, apparently, in a gallant 
attempt to save the Warrior, which was successful in so far 
that the crew of the Warrior were saved, although the ship 
had eventually to be abandoned. 

The arrival of the Grand Fleet relieved the tension upon 
us somewhat, and the battle cruiser force went on ahead, 
while we dropped back, content to let the Grand Fleet fin- 
ish off the work, but the Germans were not "having any," 
as they say in America, and almost immediately turned to 
run, pursued by our fleet. We were, of course, considerably 
superior now, but it was little use. For about half an hour 
the Grand Fleet and ourselves were firing, during which 
time it is pretty certain that we inflicted very material dam- 
age on the enemy, but after that the failing light and the very 
evident desire of the enemy to get away from such unpleasant 
company rendered it impossible to turn an undoubted suc- 
cess into a certain and decisive victory, for by that the navy 
means annihilation. 

And at last, about 9, we discontinued the action, but con- 
tinued to follow them. Right through the darkness there 



ILLUSTRATIONS I47 

were constant destroyer attacks, and the sky was lighted 
up the whole night by the flashes of the guns and by fires 
caused among the enemy by our shells. It was in fact a very 
awe-inspiring sight. 

As is known, the enemy succeeded in attacking the Marl- 
borough, but fruitlessly, as she returned to port, and is no 
doubt once more at sea. 

We continued to cruise about all night and the next day, 
offering battle to the enemy, but they were scuttling back to 
security, and we saw nothing of them, and so finally returned 
home. 



IV 

TWO EXPLANATIONS OF THE BATTLE OF 
JUTLAND 

A Berlin dispatch in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, evidently 
with official sanction, offers the following diagrammatic ex- 
planation of the great naval engagement of May 3 1 in the North 
Sea. The numbers in the text refer to the arrows representing 
the tactical moves of the opposing fleets. 

I. THE GERMAN VIEW 

In its official report of June 5 the German Admiralty Staff 
has described in brief outlines the victorious course of the 
naval battle at the Skagerrak. This account is confirmed in 
all details upon the basis of the more precise information 
which has since been received. The accompanying sketches 
illustrate in four periods the chief individual phases of the 
battle, while the accompanying map shows plainly the stra- 
tegic importance of the German victory for the war position 
in the North Sea. 



148 



FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 



On May 31, at 4:35 
ahead of the High Seas 




stroyers. Our cruisers 
ponent — this becoming 

Our cruisers (II, i) 
(compare also sketch 
i) have advanced to 
thirteen kilometers 
from the English 
battle cruisers and 
destroyers, which 
meanwhile have 
moved southward 
(2), and open fire on 
southerly to south- 
easterly courses. In 
the course of this fight 
two English battle 
cruisers and a de- 



P.M., our cruisers (I, i), proceeding 
Fleet, sighted, seventy nautical miles 
to southwest of the 
Skagerrak, four small 
English cruisers of the 
Calliope class (2), 
which ran at highest 
speed northward, pur- 
sued by our cruisers. 
At 5 : 30 our pursu- 
ing cruisers sight to 
the westward two fur- 
ther enemy columns 
(3), consisting of six 
battle cruisers, a con- 
siderable number of 
small cruisers and de- 
take a course toward the new op- 
a course toward the south. 




ILLUSTRATIONS 



149 



stroyer were sunk. After half an hour's fighting powerful 
new enemy forces come in sight from the north of the enemy ; 
they prove to be five ships of the Queen Elizabeth class (3). 
At the same time the main German force (4) approaches 
from the south and intervenes in the fight. Our cruisers 
place themselves ahead of their own main force. 

The five big ships of the Queen Elizabeth class (compare 
sketch II) have attached themselves to the enemy cruisers. 
The whole combined ,nc 

German fleet (III, i) 
is now steering north- 
ward, and in face of 
its attack the enemy 
(2) immediately turns 
away to the north, 
and attempts at the 
highest speed to 
escape from our ex- 
tremely efi"ective fire, 
and at the same time, 
with an easterly 
course, and employing 
its speed, which is 
superior to that of our fleet as a whole, to pass (3) the 
head of our line, while the German battleship squadron in 
the rear of the line cannot yet get into action with the enemy. 
Our fleet, the cruisers still leading, follows the movement of 
the enemy at highest speed. An English cruiser of the 
Achilles class and two destroyers are sunk. This period of 
the battle lasts some two and a half hours. 

Meanwhile, there approaches from the north, presumably 
coming from Norwegian waters, the English main force, 
consisting of more than twenty battleships (4). 

The climax of the battle is reached. Toward 10 o'clock 




ISO 



FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 



all the German ships (IV, i) are together facing the whole Eng- 
lish fleet. At a distance of some fifteen nautical miles the 
battle now pursues its course eastward. While the English 
cruiser fleet (2) continues its attempts to catch up the head 
of our line, Admiral Jellicoe is striving to put himself with 
his large battleships (3) like the cross of a T in front of the 
head of our line. As the head of our line thus comes for a 
time under fire from both sides, Admiral Scheer throws the 

German line round 
on to a westerly- 
course, and at the 
same time our tor- 
pedo boat flotillas 
(marked with tri- 
angles in the sketch) 
are ordered to attack 
the enemy, and they 
do so three times in 
succession with splen- 
did vigor and visible 
success. A number 
of the large English 
battleships suffer se- 
vere damage, and one sinks before our eyes. By these attacks 
the English main fleet is driven away to the east, whence it 
will afterward have taken a northwesterly course homeward. 
The German fleet ceases its violent cannonade at 11 : 30, as 
the English had already stopped firing, and after nightfall 
there was nothing but the flash of their salvos to give us a 
target. As the enemy cannot be found again the main 
battle is broken off. 

During the night numerous cruiser fights and torpedo 
boat attacks develop against individual enemy ships, which 
either had gone astray or had been ordered to worry us and 




ILLUSTRATIONS 



151 



to cover the retreat of the English. In these actions an 
enemy battle cruiser, a cruiser of the Achilles or Shannon 
class, several small enemy cruisers, and at least ten destroyers 
are sunk — six of them by the Westfalen alone. 




] Area of Battle 

Batttefie!(f& Course oFMdi'n fiction 
-^Course of Cermdn Fleet's Advance 
^Course of British f/eet's Retreat 



A squadron of English battleships came up from the south, 
but not until June i, after the battle was over, and it turned 
away without coming into action or even coming in sight 
of the main German force. It was observed by one of our 
Zeppelins, which, as is well known, owing to the foggy 
weather on the previous day, could not make reconnois- 
sances until June i. 



152 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 



II. THE BRITISH VIEW 

A British naval authority^ writing with official sanction for 
The London Daily News^ interprets Admiral Jellicoe^s report 
in a very different diagram and commentary : 

Seen in its broadest aspect, the battle of Jutland stands 
out as a case of a tactical division of the fleet, which had 
the effect of bringing an unwilling enemy to battle. Such 
a method of forcing an action is drastic and necessarily 
attended with risk, but for great ends great risks must be 
taken 

In the present case there was only an appearance of di- 
vision. The battle fleet was to the north and the battle 
cruiser fleet to the south, but they formed in fact one fleet 
under a single command acting in combination. They were 
actually carrying out, as they had been in the habit of doing 
periodically, a combined sweep of the North Sea ; and Ad- 
miral Beatty's fleet was in effect the observation or advanced 
squadron. The measure of the risk, should he have the for- 
tune to find the enemy at sea, was the length of the period 
which must necessarily elapse before the Commander in 
Chief would be able to join the battle. It was a risk that 
would be measured mainly by the skill with which Admiral 
Beatty could entice the enemy northward, without being 
overwhelmed by superior force. 

In the light of this outstanding feature the action will 
be judged, and the handling of the battle cruiser fleet and the 
splendid group of four battleships that was attached to it 
appraised. 

When Admiral Beatty got contact with the German battle 
cruisers they were proceeding northward ; and, being inferior 
to his force, they turned to the southward. The inference 
was they were either trying to escape or bent on leading him 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



153 



Lion. Spa. 



BritiiliBalfleFle* 



^mwaBatfle^^^- 



7/ 



Brmsh Battle 
Fleet-* 



BriJSih Battle 




This chart must be taken as diagrammatic only, and as a general indication of the 
course of the battle from the time when the opposing battle cruisers sighted each 
other (3 : 30) until, owing to the growing darkness and the dispersal of the enemy's 
forces, it became impossible to continue the action as an organized whole. Sir David 
Beatty's successful manoeuvre in doubling the head of the enemy's line, and, rein- 
forced by the battle fleet, establishing himself between the Germans and the Danish 
coast, is graphically shown. The enemy was compelled not only to make a complete 
turn, but to cross his original course almost at right angles after circling, and when 
the battle proper came to an end soon after 8 : 30 the bulk of the German fleet was 
heading southwest into the open sea with the British fleet between it and its bases. 

It is amusing to recall that the most "authentic " German plan of this stage of the 
battle shows one arrow stretching from Denmark toward the Orkneys to indicate 
the Une of the British retreat, and another from HeUgoland, pointing north, to repre- 
sent the Germans in chase. For comparative purposes it may be pointed out that 
the distance from Heligoland to Blaavand Point is ninety-three miles. The oflBcial 
tracks of the British fleet end at daylight on June i, but it will be observed from Sir 
John Jellicoe's report that it was not until 1:15 p.m. that " course was shaped for our 
bases." 



154 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

into danger. . . . Admiral Beatty engaged and continued to 
engage as closely as he could till he found the enemy's battle 
fleet coming north. Then he turned, but he did not break 
off the action. The enemy was in overwhelming force, but 
it was his duty to cling to them as long as his teeth would 
hold. . . . He did not flinch, but continued the fight to the 
northward, and signaled the four Queen EHzabeths to turn 
sixteen points. 

Now was the hour of greatest risk, but he was well dis- 
posed for concentrating on the van of the enemy's line, and 
the Commander in Chief was hurrying down at full speed. 
For an hour and a half the unequal battle raged as Admiral 
Beatty and Admiral Evan-Thomas led the enemy on, before 
Admiral Hood could appear with his battle cruiser squadron. 
The action was then at its hottest, but Admiral Hood, with- 
out a moment's hesitation, and in a manner that excited 
the high admiration of all who were privileged to witness 
it, placed his ships in line ahead of Admiral Beatty's 
squadron. . . . 

With his fine manoeuvre the risk was in a measure re- 
duced, but there still remained the more delicate work of the 
Grand Fleet effecting its junction and entering the ill-defined 
action. With the exact position of the enemy's fleet shrouded 
in smoke and in the gathering mist, the danger of interfer- 
ence was very great, and before the Commander in Chief lay 
a task as diflicult as any Admiral could be called upon to 
perform. To the last moment he kept his fleet in steaming 
order, so as to preserve up till the end the utmost freedom of 
deployment, but by what precise manoeuvres the deploy- 
ment was carried out must for obvious reasons be left in a 
mist as deep as that which was hiding all that was most im- 
portant for him to know. Sufiice it to say that the junction 
was effected with consummate judgment and dexterity. So 
nicely was it timed that the deployment was barely com- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 55 

pleted when, at 6: 15 p.m., the first battle squadron came 
into action with the enemy, who had by that time 
turned to the eastward and was already attempting to avoid 
action. 

Thus the fine combination had succeeded, and the unwill- 
ing enemy had been brought to action against the concen- 
trated British fleet. They had fallen into the midst of the 
net which had been drawn about them, but in the plan of 
the sweep there was inherent the inevitable limitation that 
the time left for completing the business could but barely 
suffice. There were hardly three hours of daylight left, 
and, as darkness approached, the action must be broken off 
unless a needless chance were to be given to the enemy for 
redressing his battle inferiority. Still our battle fleet was 
between the enemy and his base, and there would have been 
little hope of his escaping a decisive defeat but for the mist 
that robbed those who had prepared for the chance, and 
those who had seized it with so much skill and boldness, of 
the harvest they deserved. 



GROUP TWO 

(To Accompany Chapter II) 

A DEFENCE OF PENNY DREADFULS 1 
By G. K. Chesterton 

One of the strangest examples of the degree to which or- 
dinary life is undervalued is the example of popular liter- 
ature, the vast mass of which we contentedly describe as 
vulgar. The boy's novelette may be ignorant in a literary 

* Reprinted by special permission of the author. 



156 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

sense, which is only like saying that a modern novel is ig- 
norant in the chemical sense, or the economic sense, or the 
astronomical sense ; but it is not vulgar intrinsically — it is 
the actual centre of a million flaming imaginations. 

In former centuries the educated class ignored the ruck 
of vulgar literature. They ignored, and therefore did not, 
properly speaking, despise it. Simple ignorance and indif- 
ference does not inflate the character with pride. A man 
does not walk down the street giving a haughty twirl to his 
moustaches at the thought of his superiority to some variety 
of deep-sea fishes. The old scholars left the whole under- 
world of popular compositions in a similar darkness. 

To-day, however, we have reversed this principle. We 
do despise vulgar compositions, and we do not ignore them. 
We are in some danger of becoming petty in our study of 
pettiness ; there is a terrible Circean law in the background 
that if the soul stoops too ostentatiously to examine any- 
thing it never gets up again. There is no class of vulgar 
publications about which there is, to my mind, more ut- 
terly ridiculous exaggeration and misconception than the 
current boys' literature of the lowest stratum. This class 
of composition has presumably always existed, and must 
exist. It has no more claim to be good literature than the 
daily conversation of its readers to be fine oratory, or the 
lodging-houses and tenements they inhabit to be sublime 
architecture. But people must have conversation, they 
must have houses, and they must have stories. The simple 
need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons 
play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than 
the rules of good art, and much more important. Every 
one of us in childhood has constructed such an invisible 
dramatis personce^ but it never occurred to our nurses to 
correct the composition by careful comparison with Balzac. 
In the East the professional story-teller goes from village 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 57 

to village with a small carpet ; and I wish sincerely that 
any one had the moral courage to spread that carpet and 
sit on it in Ludgate Circus. But it is not probable that 
all the tales of the carpet-bearer are little gems of original 
artistic workmanship. Literature and fiction are two en- 
tirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a 
necessity. A work of art can hardly be too short, for its 
climax is its merit. A story can never be too long, for its 
conclusion is merely to be deplored, like the last halfpenny or 
the last pipelight. And so, while the increase of the artistic 
conscience tends in more ambitious works to brevity and 
impressionism, voluminous industry still marks the pro- 
ducer of the true romantic trash. There was no end to the 
ballads of Robin Hood ; there is no end to the volumes about 
Dick Deadshot and the Avenging Nine. These two heroes 
are deliberately conceived as immortal. 

But instead of basing all discussion of the problem upon 
the common-sense recognition of this fact — that the youth 
of the lower orders always has had and always must have 
formless and endless romantic reading of some kind, and then 
going on to make provision for its wholesomeness — we begin, 
generally speaking, by fantastic abuse of this reading as a 
whole and indignant surprise that the errand-boys under 
discussion do not read "The Egoist'' and "The Master 
Builder." It is the custom, particularly among magistrates, 
to attribute half the crimes of the Metropolis to cheap novel- 
ettes. If some grimy urchin runs away with an apple, the 
magistrate shrewdly points out that the child's knowledge that 
apples appease hunger is traceable to some curious literary 
researches. The boys themselves, when penitent, frequently 
accuse the novelettes with great bitterness, which is only to 
be expected from young people possessed of no little native 
humour. If I had forged a will, and could obtain sympathy 
by tracing the incident to the influence of Mr. George Moore's 



158 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

novels, I should find the greatest entertainment in the di- 
version. At any rate, it is firmly fixed in the minds of most 
people that gutter-boys, unlike everybody else in the commu- 
nity, find their principal motives for conduct in printed books. 

Now it is quite clear that this objection, the objection 
brought by magistrates, has nothing to do with literary 
merit. Bad story writing is not a crime. Mr. Hall Caine 
walks the streets openly, and cannot be put in prison for an 
anticlimax. The objection rests upon the theory that the 
tone of the mass of boys' novelettes is criminal and de- 
graded, appealing to low cupidity and low cruelty. This is 
the magisterial theory, and this is rubbish. 

So far as I have seen them, in connection with the dirtiest 
book-stalls in the poorest districts, the facts are simply 
these : The whole bewildering mass of vulgar juvenile liter- 
ature is concerned with adventures, rambling, disconnected, 
and endless. It does not express any passion of any sort, 
for there is no human character of any sort. It runs eter- 
nally in certain grooves of local and historical type : the 
medieval knight, the eighteenth-century duellist, and the 
modern cowboy recur with the same stiff simplicity as the 
conventional human figures in an Oriental pattern. I can 
quite as easily imagine a human being kindling wild ap- 
petites by the contemplation of his Turkey carpet as by such 
dehumanised and naked narrative as this. 

Among these stories there are a certain number which 
deal sympathetically with the adventures of robbers, out- 
laws, and pirates, which present in a dignified and romantic 
light thieves and murderers like Dick Turpin and Claude 
Duval. That is to say, they do precisely the same thing as 
Scott's " Ivanhoe," Scott's " Rob Roy," Scott's " Lady of 
the Lake," Byron's " Corsair," Wordsworth's " Rob Roy's 
Grave," Stevenson's "Macaire," Mr. Max Pemberton's 
"Iron Pirate," and a thousand more works distributed 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 59 

systematically as prizes and Christmas presents. Nobody 
imagines that an admiration of Locksley in " Ivanhoe," 
will lead a boy to shoot Japanese arrows at the deer in 
Richmond Park ; no one thinks that the incautious opening 
of Wordsworth at the poem on Rob Roy will set him up 
for life as a blackmailer. In the case of our own class, we 
recognise that this wild life is contemplated with pleasure 
by the young, not because it is like their own life, but be- 
cause it is different from it. It might at least cross our 
minds that, for whatever other reason the errand-boy reads 
"The Red Revenge,*' it really is not because he is dripping 
with the gore of his own friends and relatives. 

In this matter, as in all such matters, we lose our bearings 
entirely by speaking of the "lower classes" when we mean 
humanity minus ourselves. This trivial romantic literature 
is not especially plebeian : it Is simply human. The phi- 
lanthropist can never forget classes and callings. He says, 
with a modest swagger, "I have invited twenty-five factory 
hands to tea." If he said, "I have invited twenty-five 
chartered accountants to tea," every one would see the 
humor of so simple a classification. But this is what we 
have done with this lumberland of foolish writing : we have 
probed, as If it were some monstrous new disease, what is, 
in fact, nothing but the foolish and valiant heart of man. 
Ordinary men will always be sentimentalists : for a sen- 
timentalist Is simply a man who has feelings and does not 
trouble to invent a new way of expressing them. These 
common and current publications have nothing essentially 
evil about them. They express the sanguine and heroic 
truisms on which civilisation is built; for it is clear that 
unless civilisation Is built on truisms, it Is not built at all. 
Clearly, there could be no safety for a society In which 
the remark by the Chief Justice that murder was wrong 
was regarded as an original and dazzling epigram. 



l6o FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

If the authors and publishers of "Dick Deadshot," and such 
remarkable works, were suddenly to make a raid upon the 
educated class, were to take down the names of every man, 
however distinguished, who was caught at a University 
Extension Lecture, were to confiscate all our novels and 
warn us all to correct our lives, we should be seriously an- 
noyed. Yet they have far more right to do so than we; 
for they, with all their idiotcy, are normal and we are 
abnormal. It is the modern literature of the educated, not 
of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively crim- 
inal. Books recommending profligacy and pessimism, at 
which the high-souled errand-boy would shudder, lie upon 
all our drawing-room tables. If the dirtiest old owner of 
the dirtiest old bookstall in Whitechapel dared to display 
works really recommending polygamy or suicide, his stock 
would be seized by the police. These things are our lux- 
uries. And with a hypocrisy so ludicrous as to be almost 
unparalleled in history, we rate the gutter-boys for their 
immorality at the very time that we are discussing (with 
equivocal German professors) whether morality is valid at 
all. At the very instant that we curse the Penny Dreadful 
for encouraging thefts upon property, we canvass the prop- 
osition that all property is theft. At the very instant we 
accuse it (quite unjustly) of lubricity and indecency, we are 
cheerfully reading philosophies which glory in lubricity and 
indecency. At the very instant that we charge it with en- 
couraging the young to destroy life, we are placidly dis- 
cussing whether life is worth preserving. 

But it is we who are the morbid exceptions ; it is we who 
are the criminal class. This should be our great comfort. 
The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle 
books and idle words, have never doubted and never will 
doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that 
distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies 



ILLUSTRATIONS l6l 

Spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who 
doubt these maxims of daily life, just as there are a large 
number of persons who believe they are the Prince of Wales ; 
and I am told that both classes of people are entertaining 
conversationalists. But the average man or boy writes 
daily in these great gaudy diaries of his soul, which we call 
Penny Dreadfuls, a plainer and better gospel than any of 
those iridescent ethical paradoxes that the fashionable 
change as often as their bonnets. It may be a very limited 
aim in morality to shoot a "many-faced and fickle traitor," 
but at least it is a better aim than to be a many-faced and 
fickle traitor, which is a simple summary of a good many 
modern systems from Mr. d'Annunzio's downwards. So 
long as the coarse and thin texture of mere current popular 
romance is not touched by a paltry culture it will never be 
vitally immoral. It is always on the side of life. The poor 
— the slaves who really stoop under the burden of life — 
have often been mad, scatter-brained, and cruel, but never 
hopeless. That is a class privilege, like cigars. Their driv- 
elling literature will always be a "blood and thunder" lit- 
erature, as simple as the thunder of heaven and the blood 
of men. 



THE CASE OF THE FORGOTTEN MAN^ 

By William Graham Sumner 

There is a beautiful notion afloat in our literature and 
In the minds of our people that men are born to certain 
"natural rights." If that were true, there would be some- 
thing on earth which was got for nothing, and this world 
would not be the place it is at all. The fact is, that there is 

* Reprinted by special permission of the Yale University Press. 

M 



1 62 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

no right whatever inherited by man which has not an equiv- 
alent and corresponding duty by the side of it. The rights, 
advantages, capital, knowledge, and all other goods which 
we inherit from past generations have been won by the strug- 
gles and sufferings of past generations ; and the fact that the 
race lives, though men die, and that the race can by heredity 
accumulate within some cycle its victories over nature, is 
one of the facts which make civilization possible. The 
struggles of the race as a whole produce the possessions of 
the race as a whole. Something for nothing is not to be 
found on earth. 

If there were such things as natural rights, the question 
would arise, Against whom are they good ^ Who has the 
corresponding obligation to satisfy these rights ? There 
can be no rights against nature, except to get out of her 
whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for 
existence stated over again. The common assertion is that 
the rights are good against society ; that is, that society is 
bound to obtain and secure them for the persons interested. 
Society, however, is only the persons interested plus some 
other persons ; and as the persons interested have by the 
hypothesis failed to win the rights, we come to this, that 
natural rights are the claims which certain persons have 
by prerogative against some other persons. Such is the 
actual interpretation in practice of natural rights — claims 
which some people have by prerogative on other people. 

This theory is a very far-reaching one, and of course it is 
adequate to furnish a foundation for a whole social philos- 
ophy. In its widest extension it comes to mean that if 
any man finds himself uncomfortable in this world it must 
be somebody else's fault, and that somebody is bound to come 
and make him comfortable. Now the people who are most 
uncomfortable in this world — for if we should tell all our 
troubles it would not be found to be a very comfortable world 



ILLUSTRATIONS 163 

for anybody — are those who have neglected their duties, 
and consequently have failed to get their rights. The people 
who can be called upon to serve the uncomfortable must be 
those who have done their duty, as the world goes, tolerably 
well. Consequently the doctrine which we are discussing 
turns out to be in practice only a scheme for making injus- 
tice prevail in human society by reversing the distribution 
of rewards and punishments between those ^who have done 
their duty and those who have not. 

We are constantly preached at by our public teachers as 
if respectable people were to blame because some people 
are not respectable — as if the man who has done his duty 
in his own sphere was responsible in some way for another 
man who has not done his duty in his sphere. There are 
relations of employer and employee which need to be regu- 
lated by compromise and treaty. There are sanitary pre- 
cautions which need to be taken in factories and houses. 
There are precautions against fire which are necessary. 
There is care needed that children be not employed too 
young, and that they have an education. There is care 
needed that banks, insurance companies, and railroads be 
well managed, and that officers do not abuse their trusts. 
There is a duty in each case on the interested parties to 
defend their own interest. The penalty of neglect is suffer- 
ing. The system of providing for these things by boards 
and inspectors throws the cost of it, not on the interested 
parties, but on the tax-payers. Some of them, no doubt, are 
the interested parties, and they may consider that they are 
exercising the proper care by paying taxes to support an 
inspector. If so, they only get their fair deserts when the 
railroad inspector finds out that a bridge is not safe after it 
is broken down, or when the bank examiner comes in to 
find out why a bank failed after the cashier has stolen all 
the funds. The real victim is the Forgotten Man again — 



164 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the man who has watched his own investments, made his 
own machinery safe, attended to his own plumbing, and 
educated his own children, and who, just when he wants to 
enjoy the fruits of his care, is told that it is his duty to go 
and take care of some of his negligent neighbors, or, if he 
does not go, to pay an inspector to go. No doubt it is often 
his interest to go or to send, rather than to have the matter 
neglected, on account of his own connection with the thing 
neglected and his own secondary peril ; but the point now is, 
that if preaching and philosophizing can do any good in the 
premises, it is all wrong to preach to the Forgotten Man 
that it is his duty to go and remedy other people's neglect. 
It is not his duty. It is a harsh and unjust burden which 
is laid upon him, and it is only the more unjust because no 
one thinks of him when laying the burden so that it falls 
on him. The exhortations ought to be expended on the 
negligent — that they take care of themselves. 

It is an especially vicious extension of the false doctrine 
above mentioned that criminals have some sort of a right 
against or claim on society. Many reformatory plans are 
based on a doctrine of this kind when they are urged upon 
the public conscience. A criminal is a man who, instead 
of working with and for the society, has turned against it 
and become destructive and injurious. His punishment 
means that society rules him out of its membership and sep- 
arates him from its association, by execution or imprison- 
ment, according to the gravity of his offense. He has no 
claims against society at all. What shall be done with him 
is a question of expediency to be settled in view of the in- 
terests of society — that is, of the non-criminals. The 
French writers of the school of '48 used to represent the 
badness of the bad men as the fault of "society." As the 
object of this statement was to show that the badness of 
the bad men was not the fault of the bad men, and as society 



ILLUSTRATIONS 165 

contains only good men and bad men, it followed that the 
badness of the bad men was the fault of the good men. On 
that theory of course the good men owed a great deal to the 
bad men who were in prison and at the galleys on their ac- 
count. If we do not admit that theory, it behooves us to 
remember that any claim which we allow to the criminal 
against the "state" is only so much burden laid upon those 
who have never cost the State anything for discipline or 
correction. The punishments of society are just, like those 
of God and nature — they are warnings to the wrong-doer 
to reform himself. 

When public offices are to be filled numerous candidates 
at once appear. Some are urged on the ground that they 
are poor, or cannot earn a living, or want support while 
getting an education, or have female relatives dependent on 
them, or are in poor health, or belong in a particular dis- 
trict, or are related to certain persons, or have done meri- 
torious service in some other line of work than that which 
they apply to do. The abuses of the public service are to be 
condemned on account of the harm to the public interest, 
but there is an incidental injustice of the same general char- 
acter with that which we are discussing. If an office is 
granted by favoritism or for any personal reason to A, it 
cannot be given to B. If an office is filled by a person who 
is unfit for it, he always keeps out somebody somewhere 
who is fit for it; that is, the social injustice has a victim 
in an unknown person — the Forgotten Man — and he 
is some person who has no political influence, and who 
has known no way in which to secure the chances of life 
except to deserve them. He is passed by for the noisy, 
pushing, importunate, and incompetent. 

I have said elsewhere, disparagingly, something about 
the popular rage against combined capital, corporations, cor- 
ners, selling futures, etc. The popular rage is not without 



1 66 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

reason, but it is sadly misdirected, and the real things which 
deserve attack are thriving all the time. The greatest social 
evil with which we have to contend is jobbery. What- 
ever there is in legislative charters, watering stocks, and so 
on which is objectionable comes under the head of jobbery. 
Jobbery is any scheme which aims to gain, not by the legiti- 
mate fruits of industry and enterprise, but by extorting from 
somebody a part of his product under guise of some pre- 
tended industrial undertaking. Of course it is only a modi- 
fication when the undertaking in question has some legitimate 
character, but the occasion is used to graft upon it devices 
for obtaining what has not been earned. Jobbery is the 
vice of plutocracy, and it is the especial form under which 
plutocracy corrupts a democratic and republican form of 
government. The United States is deeply afflicted with it, 
and the problem of civil liberty here is to conquer it. It 
affects everything which we really need to have done to 
such an extent that we have to do without public objects 
which we need through fear of jobbery. Our public build- 
ings are jobs — not always, but often. They are not needed, 
or are costly beyond all necessity or even decent luxury. 
Internal improvements are jobs. They are not made be- 
cause they are needed to meet needs which have been ex- 
perienced. They are made to serve private ends, often in- 
cidentally the political interests of the persons who vote the 
appropriations. Pensions have become jobs. In England 
pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats 
had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pen- 
sions are given to the great democratic mass, because they 
have political power, to corrupt them. Instead of going out 
where there is plenty of land and making a farm there, 
some people go down under the Mississippi River to make 
a farm, and then they want to tax all the people in the 
United States to make dikes to keep the river off their 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 67 

farms. The California gold-miners have washed out gold 
and have washed the dirt down into the rivers and on the 
farms below. They want the Federal Government to clean 
out the rivers now and restore the farms. The silver- 
miners found their product declining in value and they 
got the Federal Government to go into the market and 
buy what the public did not want, in order to sustain, as 
they hoped, the price of silver. The Federal Government is 
called upon to buy or hire unsalable ships, to build canals 
which will not pay, to furnish capital for all sorts of ex- 
periments, and to provide capital for enterprises of which 
private individuals will win the profits. All this is called 
"developing our resources," but it is, in truth, the great 
plan of all living on each other. 

The greatest job of all is a protective tariff. It includes 
the biggest log-rolling and the widest corruption of economic 
and political ideas. It was said that there would be a re- 
bellion if the taxes were not taken off whisky and tobacco, 
which taxes were paid into the public Treasury. Just then 
the importations of Sumatra tobacco became important 
enough to affect the market. The Connecticut tobacco- 
growers at once called for an import duty on tobacco which 
would keep up the price of their product. So it appears 
that if the tax on tobacco is paid to the Federal Treasury 
there will be a rebellion, but if it is paid to the Connecticut 
tobacco-raisers there will be no rebellion at all. The farm- 
ers have long paid tribute to the manufacturers ; now the 
manufacturing and other laborers are to pay tribute to the 
farmers. The system is made more comprehensive and 
complete and we are all living on each other more than ever. 

Now the plan of plundering each other produces nothing. 
It only wastes. All the material over which the protected 
interests wrangle and grab must be got from somebody out- 
side of their circle. The talk is all about the American 



1 68 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

laborer and American industry, but in every case in which 
there is not an actual production of wealth by industry 
there are two laborers and two industries to be considered — 
the one who gets and the one who gives. Every protected 
industry has to plead, as the major premise of its argument, 
that any industry which does not pay ought to be carried on 
at the expense of the consumers of the product, and as its 
minor premise, that the industry in question does not pay ; 
that is, that it cannot reproduce a capital equal in value to 
that which it consumes plus the current rate of profit. Hence 
2very such industry must be a parasite on some other in- 
dustry. What is the other industry ? Who is the other 
man ^ This, the real question, is always overlooked. 

In all jobbery the case is the same. There is a victim 
somewhere who is paying for it all. The doors of waste 
and extravagance stand open, and there seems to be a 
general agreement to squander and spend. It all belongs 
to somebody. There is somebody who had to contribute 
it and who will have to find more. Nothing is ever said 
about him. Attention is all absorbed by the clamorous 
interests, the importunate petitioners, the plausible schemers, 
the pitiless bores. Now, who is the victim } He is the 
Forgotten Man. If we go to find him, we shall find him 
hard at work tilling the soil to get out of it the fund for all 
the jobbery, the object of all the plunder, the cost of all 
the economic quackery, and the pay of all the politicians and 
statesmen who have sacrificed his interests to his enemies. 
We shall find him an honest, sober, industrious citizen, un- 
known outside his little circle, paying his debts and his 
taxes, supporting the church and the school, reading his 
party newspaper, and cheering for his pet politician. 

We must not overlook the fact that the Forgotten Man, 
is not infrequently a woman. I have before me a newspaper 
which contains five letters from corset-stitchers who com- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 169 

plain that they cannot earn more than seventy-five cents 
a day with a machine and that they have to provide the 
thread. The tax on the grade of thread used by them is pro- 
hibitory as to all importation, and it is the corset-stitchers 
who have to pay day by day out of their time and labor the 
total enhancement of price due to the tax. Women who 
earn their own living probably earn on an average seventy- 
five cents per day of ten hours. Twenty-four minutes' 
work ought to buy a spool of thread at the retail price, if 
the American work-woman were allowed to exchange her 
labor for thread on the best terms that the art and com- 
merce of to-day would allow ; but after she has done twenty- 
four minutes' work for the thread she is forced by the laws 
of her country to go back and work sixteen minutes longer 
to pay the tax — that is, to support the thread-mill. The 
thread-mill, therefore, is not an institution for getting thread 
for the American people, but for making thread harder to 
get than it would be if there were no such institution. 

In justification, now, of an arrangement so monstrously 
unjust and out of place in a free country, it is said that 
the employes in the thread-mill get high wages and that, 
but for the tax, American laborers must come down to the 
low wages of foreign thread-makers. It is not true that 
American thread-makers get any more than the market 
rate of wages, and they would not get less if the tax were 
entirely removed, because the market rate of wages in the 
United States would be controlled then, as it is now, by the 
supply and demand of laborers under the natural advan- 
tages and opportunities of industry in this country. It 
makes a great impression on the imagination, however, to go 
to a manufacturing town and see great mills and a crowd of 
operatives ; and such a sight is put forward, under the special 
allegation that it would not exist but for a protective tax, 
as a proof that protective taxes are wise. But if it be true 



170 PACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

that the thread-mill would not exist but for the tax, then 
how can we form a judgment as to whether the protec- 
tive system is wise or not unless we call to mind all the 
seamstresses, washer-women, servants, factory-hands, sales- 
women, teachers, and laborers' wives and daughters, scattered 
in the garrets and tenements of great cities and in cottages 
all over the country, who are paying the tax which keeps the 
mill going and pays the extra wages ? If the sewing-women, 
teachers, servants, and washer-women could once be col- 
lected over against the thread-mill, then some inferences 
could be drawn which would be worth something. Then 
some light might be thrown upon the obstinate fallacy of 
"creating an industry" and we might begin to understand the 
difference between wanting thread and wanting a thread- 
mill. Some nations spend capital on great palaces, others 
on standing armies, others on iron-clad ships of war. Those 
things are all glorious and strike the imagination with great 
force when they are seen, but no one doubts that they 
make life harder for the scattered insignificant peasants and 
laborers who have to pay for them all. They "support 
a great many people," they "make work," they "give em- 
ployment to other industries." We Americans have no 
palaces, armies, or iron-clads, but we spend our earnings on 
protected industries. A big protected factory, if it really 
needs the protection for its support, is a heavier load for the 
Forgotten Men and Women than an iron-clad ship of war 
in time of peace. 

It is plain that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten 
Woman are the real productive strength of the country. 
The Forgotten Man works and votes — generally he prays 
— but his chief business in life is to pay. His name never 
gets into the newspapers except when he marries or dies. 
He is an obscure man. He may grumble sometimes to his 
wife, but he does not frequent the grocery, and he does not 



ILLUSTRATIONS 171 

talk politics at the tavern. So he is forgotten. Yet who is 
there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher 
ought to think of before this man } If any student of social 
science comes to appreciate the case of the Forgotten Man, 
he will become an unflinching advocate of strict scientific 
thinking in sociology and a hard-hearted skeptic as regards 
any scheme of social amelioration. He will always want to 
know. Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, 
who will have to pay for it all ^ 

The Forgotten Man is not a pauper. It belongs to his 
character to save something. Hence he is a capitalist, 
though never a great one. He is a "poor" man in the 
popular sense of the word, but not in a correct sense. In 
fact, one of the most constant and trustworthy signs that the 
Forgotten Man is in danger of a new assault is that "the 
poor man" is brought into the discussion. Since the For- 
gotten Man has some capital, anyone who cares for his in- 
terest will try to make capital secure by securing the invio- 
lability of contracts, the stability of currency, and the 
firmness of credit. Anyone, therefore, who cares for the 
Forgotten Man will be sure to be considered a friend of the 
capitalist and an enemy of the poor man. 

It is the Forgotten Man who is threatened by every ex- 
tension of the paternal theory of government. It is he who 
must work and pay. When, therefore, the statesmen and 
social philosophers sit down to think what the state can do 
or ought to do, they really mean to decide what the For- 
gotten Man shall do. What the Forgotten Man wants, there- 
fore, is a fuller realization of constitutional liberty. He is 
suffering from the fact that there are yet mixed in our in- 
stitutions mediaeval theories of protection, regulation, and 
authority, and modern theories of independence and indi- 
vidual liberty and responsibility. The consequence of this 
mixed state of things is that those who are clever enough 



172 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

to get into control use the paternal theory by which to 
measure their own rights — that is, they assume privileges 
— and they use the theory of liberty to measure their own 
duties; that is, when it comes to the duties, they want to 
be "let alone." The Forgotten Man never gets into control. 
He has to pay both ways. His rights are measured to 
him by the theory of liberty — that is, he has only such as he 
can conquer; his duties are measured to him on the pa- 
ternal theory — that is, he must discharge all which are laid 
upon him, as is the fortune of parents. In a paternal re- 
lation there are always two parties, a father and a child ; 
and when we use the paternal relation metaphorically, it is 
of the first importance to know who is to be father and 
who Is to be child. The role of parent falls always to the 
Forgotten Man. What he wants, therefore, is that am- 
biguities in our institutions be cleared up and that liberty 
be more fully realized. 

It behooves any economist or social philosopher, what- 
ever be the grade of his orthodoxy, who proposes to enlarge 
the sphere of the "state," or to take any steps whatever 
having in view the welfare of any class whatever, to pursue 
the analysis of the social effects of his proposition until he 
finds that other group whose interests must be curtailed 
or whose energies must be placed under contribution by the 
course of action which he proposes, and he cannot maintain 
his proposition until he has demonstrated that it will be 
more advantageous, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to 
those who must bear the weight of It than complete non- 
interference by the state with the relations of the parties 
in question. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 173 

LIFE, ART AND AMERICA 1 
By Theodore Dreiser 

I DO not pretend to speak with any historic or sociologic 
knowledge of the sources of the American ethical, and 
therefore critical, point of view, though I suspect the origin, 
but I, personally, am at last convinced that, whatever its 
source or sense, it does not accord with the facts of life as 
I have noted or experienced them. To me, the average or 
somewhat standardized American is an odd, irregularly de- 
veloped soul, wise and even froward in matters of mechanics, 
organizations, and anything that relates to technical skill in 
connection with material things, but absolutely devoid of any 
true spiritual insight, any correct knowledge of the history of 
literature or art, and confused by and mentally lost In or 
overcome by the multiplicity of the purely material and In- 
articulate details by which he finds himself surrounded. . . . 

My concern is with the mental and critical standards of 
America as they exist to-day, and of England, from which 
they seem to be derived. The average American has such 
an odd, such a naive conception of what the world is like, 
what it is that Is taking place under his eyes and under the 
sun. If you should chance to consult a Methodist, a Bap- 
tist, a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, or any other current Amer- 
ican sectarian, on this subject, you would find (which, after 
all, is a dull thing to point out at this day and date) that his 
conception of the things which he sees about him is bounded 
by what he was taught in his Sunday school or his church, 
or what he has stored up or gathered from the conventions 
of his native town. (His native town ! Kind heaven !) 
And, although the world has stored up endless treasuries of 

^Reprinted from "The Seven Arts" by special permission of the pub- 
lishers and the author. 



174 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

knowledge In regard to itself chemically, sociologically, 
historically, philosophically — still the millions and mil- 
lions who tramp the streets and occupy the stores and fill 
the highways and byways, and the fields, and the tenements 
of the city, have no faintest knowledge of this, or of any- 
thing else that can be said to be intellectually "doing." 
They live in theories and isms, and under codes dictated by 
a church or a state or an order of society, which has no least 
regard for or relationship to their natural mental develop- 
ment. The darkest side of democracy, like that of autocra- 
cies, is that it permits the magnetic and the cunning and 
the unscrupulous among the powerful individuals, to sway 
vast masses of the mob, not so much to their own immediate 
destruction as to the curtailment of their natural privileges 
and the ideas which they should be allowed to entertain 
if they could think at all, and, incidentally, to the annoying 
and sometimes undoing of individuals who have the truest 
brain interests of the race at heart — Vide ! Giordano Bruno ! 
Jan Huss ! Savonarola ! Tom Paine ! Walt Whitman ! Edgar 
Allan Poe ! 

For, after all, as I have pointed out somewhere, the great 
business of life and mind Is life. We are here, I take it, 
not merely to moon and vegetate, but to do a little thinking 
about this state In which we find ourselves. It Is perfectly 
legitimate, all priests and theories and philosophies to the 
contrary notwithstanding, to go back, in so far as we may, 
to the primary sources of thought, i.e., the visible scene, the 
actions and thoughts of people, the movements of nature 
and its chemical and physical subtleties. In order to draw 
original and radical conclusions for ourselves. The great 
business of an Individual, If he has any time after struggling 
for life and a reasonable amount of entertainment or sen- 
sory satiation, should be this very thing. A man, if he can, 
should question the things that he sees — not some things, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 175 

but everything — stand, as it were, in the center of this 
whirling storm of contradiction which we know as life, and 
ask of it its source and its import. Else why a brain at all ? 
If only one could induce a moderate number of individuals, 
out of all that pass this way and come no more, apparently, 
to pause and think about life and take an individual point 
of view, the freedom and the individuality and the interest 
of the world might, I fancy, be greatly enhanced. We com- 
plain of the world as dull, at times. If it is so, lack of think- 
ing by individuals is the reason. But to ask the poor, half- 
equipped mentality of the mass to think, to be individual — 
what an anachronism ! You might as well ask of a rock to 
move, or a tree to fly. 

Nevertheless, here in America, by reason of an idealistic 
constitution which is largely a work of art and not a work- 
able system, you see a nation dedicated to so-called intellectual 
and spiritual freedom, but actually devoted with an almost 
bee-like industry to the gathering and storing and articula- 
tion and organization and use of purely material things. 
In spite of all our base-drum announcement of our servitude 
to the intellectual ideals of the world, no nation has ever 
contributed less, philosophically or artistically or spiritually, 
to the actual development of the intellect and the spirit. 
I shall have more to say concerning this later on. We have 
invented many things, it is true, which have relieved man 
from the crushing weight of a too-grinding toil, and this 
perhaps may be the sole mission of America in the world 
and the universe, its destiny, its end. Personally, I think 
it is not a half bad thing to have done, and the submarine 
and the flying machine and the armored dreadnought, no 
less than the sewing machine and the cotton gin and the 
binder and the reaper and the cash register and the trolley 
car and the telephone, may, in the end, or perhaps already 
have, proved as significant in breaking the chains of physical 



176 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

and mental slavery of man as anything else. I do not 
know. 

One thing I do know is that America seems profoundly 
interested in these things, to the exclusion of anything else. 
It has no time, you might almost say, no taste, to stop and 
contemplate life in the large, from an artistic or a philosophic 
point of view. Yet, after all, when all the machinery for 
lessening man's burdens has been invented, and all the 
safeguards for his preservation completed and possibly shat- 
tered by forces too deep or superior for his cunning, may 
not a phrase, a line of poetry, or a single act of some half 
forgotten tragedy be all that is left of what we now see or 
dream of as materially perfect ^ For, after all, is it not a 
thought alone, of many famous and powerful things that 
have already gone, that alone endures — a thought conveyed 
by art as a medium ^ 

But let me not become too remote or too fine-spun in my 
conception of the ultimate significance of art itself. The 
point which I wish to make here is just this : That in a land 
so devoted to the material, although dedicated by its con- 
stitution to the ideal, the condition of art and intellectual 
freedom is certainly anomalous. Your trade and your trust 
builder, most obviously dominant in America at this time, 
is of all people most indifi"erent to, or most unconscious of, 
the ultimate and pressing claims of mind and spirit as ex- 
pressed by art. If you doubt this, you have only to look 
about you to see for what purposes, to what end, the in- 
crement of men of wealth and material power in America 
is devoted. We have something like twenty-five hundred 
colleges and schools and institutions of various kinds, largely 
furthered by the money of American men of wealth, and 
all devoted to the development of the mental equipment of 
man, yet all set against anything which is related to truly 
radical investigation, or thought, or action, or art. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 177 

As a matter of fact, in spite of the American constitution 
and the American oratorical address of all and sundry occa- 
sions, the average American school, college, university, insti- 
tution, is very much against the developmrent of the indi- 
vidual in the true sense of that word. What it really wants 
is not an individual, but an automatic copy of some altruistic 
and impossible ideal, which has been formulated here and 
in England, under the domination of Christianity. This is 
literally true. I defy you to read any college or university 
prospectus or address or plea, which concerns the purposes 
or the ideals of these institutions, and not agree with me. 
They are not after individuals, they are after types or schools 
of individuals, all to be very much alike, all to be like them- 
selves. And what type ^ Listen. I know of an American 
college professor in one of our successful state universities 
who had this to say of the male graduates of his institution, 
after having watched the output for a number of years : 
"They are all right, quite satisfactory as machines for the 
production of material wealth or for the maintenance of 
certain forms of professional skill, now very useful to the 
world, but as for having ideas of their own, being creators 
or men with the normal impulses and passions of manhood, 
they do not fulfill the requisite in any respect. They are 
little more than types, machines, made in the image and 
likeness of their college. They do not think; they cannot 
think, because they are bound hard and fast by the iron 
band of convention. They are moral young beings. Chris- 
tian beings, model beings, but they are not men in the cre- 
ative sense, and by far the large majority will never do a 
single original thing until by chance or necessity the theories 
and the conventions imposed or generated by their training 
and their surroundings are broken, and they become free, 
independent, self thinking individuals." 

I know of one woman's college, for instance, an American 

N 



178 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

institution of the very highest standing which, since its incep- 
tion, has sent forth into life some thousands of graduates 
and post graduates, to battle life as they may for individual 
supremacy or sensory comfort. They are, or were, sup- 
posed to be individuals, capable of individual thought, pro- 
cedure, invention, development, yet out of all of them, not 
one has ever even entered upon any creative or artistic labor 
of any kind. Not one. (Write me for the name of the 
college, if you wish.) There is not a chemist, a physiologist, 
a botanist, a biologist, an historian, a philosopher, an artist, 
of any kind or repute, among them, not one. No one of 
them has attained to even passing repute in these fields. 
They are secretaries to corporations, teachers, missionaries, 
college librarians, educators in any of the scores of pilfered 
meanings that may be attached to that much abused word. 
They are curators, directors, keepers. They are not indi- 
viduals in the true sense of that word ; they have not been 
taught to think, they are not free. They do not invent, 
lead, create. They only copy or take care of, yet they 
are graduates of this college and its theory, mostly ultra 
conventional or, worse yet, anaemic, and glad to wear its 
collar, to clank the chains of its ideas or ideals — autom- 
atons in a social scheme whose last and final detail was 
outlined to them in the classrooms of their alma mater. 
That, to me, is one phase, amusing enough, of intellectual 
freedom in America. 

But the above is a mere detail in any chronicle or picture 
of the social or intellectual state of the United States. No 
country in the world, at least none that I know anything 
about, has such a peculiar, such a seemingly fierce determi- 
nation, to make the Ten Commandments work. It would 
be amusing if it were not pitiful, their faith in these bind- 
ing religious ideals. I, for one, have never been able to make 
up my mind whether this springs from the zealotry of the 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 79 

Puritans who landed at Plymouth Rock, or whether It is 
indigenous to the soil (which I doubt when I think of the 
Indians who preceded the whites), or whether it is a prod- 
uct of the federal constitution, compounded " by such ideal- 
ists as Paine and Jefferson and Franklin, and the more or 
less religious and political dreamers of the pre-constitutional 
days. Certain it is that no profound moral idealism ani- 
mated the French in Canada, the Dutch in New York, the 
Swedes in New Jersey, or the mixed French and English in 
the extreme south and New Orleans. 

The first shipload of white women that was ever brought 
to America was sold, almost at so much a pound. They 
were landed at Jamestown. The basis of all the first large 
fortunes was laid, to speak plainly, in graft — the most out- 
rageous concessions obtained abroad. The history of our 
relations with the American Indians is sufficient to lay any 
claim to financial or moral virtue or worth in the white men 
who settled this country. We debauched, then robbed, and 
murdered them. There is no other conclusion to be drawn 
from the facts covering that relationship as set down in any 
history worthy of the name. In regard to the development 
of our land, our canals, our railroads, and the vast organi- 
zations supplying our present day necessities, their history 
is a complex of perjury, robbery, false witness, extortion, 
and indeed every crime to which avarice, greed, and ambition 
are heir. If you do not believe this, examine at your leisure 
the various congressional and state legislative investigations 
which have been held on an average of every six months 
since the government was founded, and see for yourself. 
The cunning and unscrupulousness of American brains can 
be matched against any the world has ever known. 

But an odd thing in connection with this financial and 
social criminality is that it has been consistently and regu- 
larly accompanied, outwardly at least, by a religious and 



l8o FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

a sex Puritanism which would be scarcely believable if it 
were not true. I do not say that the robbers and thieves 
who did so much to build up our great commercial and social 
structures were in themselves inwardly or outwardly always 
religious or puritanically moral from the sex point of view, 
although in regard to the latter, they most frequently made 
a show of so being. But I do say this, that the communities 
and the states and the nation in which they were committing 
their depredations have been individually and collectively, 
in so far as the written, printed, and acted word are con- 
cerned, and in pictures and music, militantly pure and re- 
ligious during all the time that this has been going forward 
under their eyes, and, to a certain extent, with their political 
consent. Why ? I have a vague feeling that it is the Ameri- 
can of Anglo-Saxon origin only who has been most vivid 
in his excitement over religion and morals where the written, 
printed, acted, or painted word was concerned, yet who, at 
the same time, and perhaps for this very reason, was failing 
or deliberately refusing to see, the contrast which his or- 
dinary and very human actions presented to all this. Was 
he a hypocrite ^ Oh, well ! — is he one ? I hate to think 
it, but he certainly acts the part exceedingly well. Either 
he is that or a fool — take your choice. 

Your American of Anglo-Saxon or any other origin is 
actually no better, spiritually or morally, than any other 
creature of this earth, be he Turk or Hindu or Chinese, except 
from a materially constructive or wealth-breeding point of 
view, but for some odd reason or another, he thinks he is. 
The only real difference is that, cast out or spewed out by 
conditions over which he had no control elsewhere, he 
chanced to fall into a land overflowing with milk and honey. 
Nature in America was, and still is, kind to the lorn foreigner 
seeking a means of subsistence, and he seems to have im- 
mediately attributed this to three things : First, his inher- 



ILLUSTIL\TIONS l8l 

ent capacity to dominate and control wealth; second, the 
especial favor of God to him; third, to his superior and 
moral state (due, of course, to his possession of wealth). 
These three things, uncorrected as yet by any great financial 
pressure, or any great natural or world catastrophe, have 
served to keep the American in his highly romantic state of 
self deception. He still thinks that he is a superior spiritjal 
and moral being, infinitely better than the creatures of 
any other land, and nothing short of a financial cataclysm, 
which will come with the pressure of population on resources, 
will convince him that he is not. But that he will yet be 
convinced is a certainty. You need not fear. Leave it to 
nature. 

One of the interesting phases of this puritanism or pharisee- 
ism is his attitude toward women and their morality and 
their purity. If ever a people has refined eroticism to a 
greater degree than the American, I am not aware of it. 
The good American, capable of the same gross financial crimes 
previously indicated, has been able to look upon most women, 
but more particularly those above him in the social scale, 
as considerably more than human — angelic, no less, and 
possessed of qualities the like of which are not to be found 
in any breathing being, man, woman, child, or animal. 
It matters not that his cities and towns, like those of any 
other nation, are rife with sex. 

Only a sex-blunted nature or race such as the Anglo- 
Saxon could have built up any such asinine theory as this. 
The purity, the sanctity, the self-abnegation, the delicacy 
of women — how these qualities have been exaggerated and 
dinned into our ears, until at last the average scrubby non- 
reasoning male, quite capable of taking a girl off the street, 
is no more able to clearly visualize the creature before him 
than he is the central wilds of Africa which he has never 
seen. A princess, a goddess, a divine mother or creative 



1 82 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

principle, all the virtues, all the perfections, no vices, no 
weaknesses, no errors — some such hodge-podge as this has 
come to be the average Anglo-Saxon, or at least American, 
conception of the average American woman. I do not say- 
that a portion of this illusion is not valuable — I think it 
is. But as it stands now, she is too good to be true : a 
paragon, a myth ! Actually, she doesn't exist at all as he 
has been taught to inlagine her. She is nothing more than 
a two-legged biped like the rest of us, but in consequence of 
this delusion sex itself, being a violation of this paragon, has 
become a crime. We enter upon the earth, it is true, in a 
none too artistic manner (conceived in iniquity and born in 
sin, is the biblical phrasing of it), but all this has long since 
been glozed over — ignored — and to obviate its brutality 
as much as possible, the male has been called upon to purify 
himself in thought and deed, to avoid all private speculation 
as to women and his relationship to them, and, much more 
than that, to avoid all public discussion, either by word of 
mouth or the printed page. 

To think of women or to describe them as anything less 
than the paragon previously commented upon, has become, 
by this process, not only a sin — it is a shameful infraction of 
the moral code, no less. Women are too good, the sex re- 
lationship too vile a thing, to be mentioned or even thought 
of. We must move in a mirage of illusion. We must not 
know what we really do. We must trample fact under foot 
and give fancy, in the guise of our so-called better natures, 
free rein. How this must affect or stultify the artistic and 
creative faculties of the race itself must be plain. Yet that 
is exactly where we stand to-day, ethically and spiritually, 
in regard to sex and women, and that is what is the matter 
with American social life, letters, and art. 

I do not pretend to say that this is not a workable and a 
satisfactory code in case any race or nation chooses to follow 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 83 

It, but I do say it is deadening to the artistic impulse, and I 
mean it. Imagine a puritan or a moralist attempting any- 
thing in art, which is nothing if not a true reflection of in- 
sight into life ! Imagine ! And contrast this moral or art 
narrowness with his commercial, or financial, or agricul- 
tural freedom and sense, and note the difference. In regard 
to all the latter, he is cool, skeptical, level-headed, under- 
standing, natural — consequently well developed in those 
fields. In regard to this other, he is illusioned, theoretic, re- 
ligious. In consequence, he has no power, except for an 
occasional individual who may rise in spite of these un- 
toward conditions (to be frowned upon) to understand, 
much less picture, life as it really is. Artistically, intel- 
lectually, philosophically, we are weaklings; financially, 
and in all ways commercial we are very powerful. So 
one-sided has been our development that in this latter 
respect we are almost giants. Strange, almost fabulous 
creatures, have been developed here by this process, men so 
singularly devoid of a rounded human nature that they have 
become freaks in this one direction — that of money getting. 
I refer to Rockefeller, Gould, Sage, Vanderbilt the first, H. 
H. Rogers, Carnegie, Frick. Strong in all but this one 
capacity, the majority of our great men stand forth as true 
human rarities, the like of which has scarcely ever been seen 
before. 

America could be described as the land of Bottom the 
Weaver. And by Bottom I mean the tradesman or manu- 
facturer who by reason of his enthusiasm for the sale of 
paints or powder or threshing machines or coal, has accumu- 
lated wealth and, in consequence and by reason of the hap- 
hazard privileges of democracy, has strayed into a position 
of counsellor, or even dictator, not in regard to the things 
about which he might readily be supposed to know, but about 
the many things about which he would be much more likely 



1 84 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

not to know : art, science, philosophy, morals, public policy 
in general. You recall him, of course, in "A Midsummer 
Night's Dream," unconscious of his furry ears and also that 
he does not know how to play the lion's part — that it is 
more difficult than mere roaring. Here he is now, in America, 
enthroned as a lion, and in his way he is an epitome of the 
Anglo-Saxon temperament. All merchants, judges, lawyers, 
priests, politicians — what a goodly company of Bottoms 
they are. Solidified, they are Bottom to the life. 

Bottom is so wise in his own estimation. He never once 
suspects his furry ears or that he is not a perfect actor in the 
role of the lion — or (if you will take it for what it is meant) 
the arts. He is just a dull weaver, really, made by this dream 
of our constitution ("an exposition of sleep" come upon him) 
into a roaring lion — in his own estimation. No one must say 
that Bottom is not : he will be driven out of the country — 
deported or exiled. No one must presume to practise the arts 
save as Bottom understands them. If you do, presto, there 
is his henchman Comstock and all Comstockery to take you 
into custody. Men who have come here from foreign shores 
(England excepted) have been amazed at Bottom's ears and 
his presumption in passing upon what is a lion's part in 
life. Indeed he is the Anglo-Saxon temperament personified. 
He is convinced that liberty was not made for Oberon or 
Peaseblossom or Cobweb or Mustard, but for bishops and 
executives and wholesale grocers and men who have become 
vastly rich canning tomatoes or selling oil. We must be 
"marvelous furry about the face" and do things his way, 
to be free. The great desire of Bottom is for all of us to 
have furry ears and long ones and to believe that he is the 
greatest actor in the world. He is bewildered by a world 
that will not play Pyramus his way. Quince, Snug, Flute, 
Snout, and Starveling (all those who came over with him in 
the Mayflower) agree that he is a great actor, but there ar^ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 185 

others, and Bottom is convinced that these others are in 
error — trying to wreck that dream, the American Con- 
stitution, which brought this "exposition of sleep" upon him 
and made him into a lion — "marvelous furry about the face" 
and with great ears. 

Alas, alas ! for art in America. It has a hard, stubby 
row to hoe. 

But my quarrel is not with America as a comfortable in- 
dustrious atmosphere in which to move and have one's being, 
but largely because it is no more than that — because it tends 
to become a dull, conventionalized, routine, material world. 
We are drifting, unless most of the visible signs are deceiv- 
ing, into the clutches of a commercial oligarchy whose mental 
standards outside of trade are so puerile as to be scarcely 
worth discussing. Contemplate, if you please, what has 
happened to one of the shibboleths or bulwarks of our 
sacred liberties and intellectual freedom, i.e., the newspaper, 
under the dominance of trade. Look at it. I have not 
time here to stop and set forth seriatim all the charges that 
have been made, and in the main thoroughly substantiated, 
against the American newspaper. But consider for your- 
selves the newspapers which you know and read. How much, 
I ask you, if you are in trade, do the newspapers you know, 
know about trade t How much actual truth do they tell 1 
How far could you follow their trade judgment or under- 
standing ? And if you are a member of any profession, how 
much reported professional knowledge or news, as presented 
by a newspaper, can you rely on .? If a newspaper reported 
a professional man's judgment or dictum in regard to any 
important professional fact, how fully would you accept 
it without other corroborative testimony 1 

You are a play-goer : do you believe the newspaper 
dramatic critics .? You are a student of literature : do you 
accept the mouthings of their literary critics or even look 



1 86 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

to them for advice ? You are an artist or a lover of art : 
do you follow the newspapers for anything more than the 
barest intelligence as to the whereabouts of anything ar- 
tistic ? I doubt it. And in regard to politics, finance, social 
movements and social affairs, are they not actually the 
darkest, the most misrepresentative, frequently the most 
biased and malicious guides in the world of the printed 
word ? Take their mouthings concerning ethics and morals 
alone and contrast them, if you please, with their private 
policy or their financial connections — the forces by which 
they are directed, editorially and otherwise. I am not 
speaking of all newspapers, but never mind the exception. 
It is always unimportant in mass conditions, anyhow. 
Newspaper criticism, like newspaper leadership, has already 
long since come to be looked upon by the informed and in- 
telligent as little more than the mouthings or bellowings 
of mercenaries or panderers to trade, or, worse still, rank 
incompetents. The newspaper man, per se^ either does not 
know or cannot help himself. The newspaper publisher is 
very glad of this and uses his half intelligence or inability 
to further his own interests. Politicians, administrations, 
department stores, large interests, and personalities of 
various kinds, use or control or compel newspapers to do their 
bidding. This is a severe indictment to make against the 
press in general. Is it not literally true \ Do you not, of 
your own knowledge, know it to be so t 

Take again the large, the almost dominant religious and 
commercial organizations of America. What relationship, 
if any, do they bear to a free mental development, a refined 
taste, a subtle understanding, art or life in its poetic or tragic 
moulds, its drift, its character \ Would you personally look 
to the Methodist, or the Presbyterian, or the Catholic, or the 
Baptist church to further individualism, or freedom of 
thought, or directness of mental action, or art in any form ? 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 87 

Do not they really ask of all their adherents that they lay 
aside this freedom in favor of the reported word or dictum 
of a fabled, a non-historic, an imaginary ruler, of the uni- 
verse ? Think of it. And they are among the powerful, 
constructive, and controlling elements in government — in 
this government, to be accurate — dedicated and presumably 
devoted to individual liberty, not only of so-called con- 
science, but of constructive thought and art. 

And our large corporations, with their dominant and con- 
trolling captains of industry, so-called. What about their 
relationship to individuality, the freedom of the individual 
to think for himself — to grow along constructural lines ? 
Take, for instance, the tobacco trust, the oil trust, the milk 
trust, the coal trust — in what way, do you suppose, do they 
help ? Are they actively seeking a better code of ethics, a 
wider historic or philosophic perspective, a more delicate 
art perception for the individual, or are they definitely and 
permanently concerned with the customary bludgeoning 
tactics of trade, piling up fortunes out of which they are to 
be partially bled later by pseudo art collectors and swindling 
dealers in antiques and so-called historic art and literature ^ 
Of current life and its accomplishments, what do they actually 
know ^ Yet this is a democracy. Here, as in every other 
realm of the world, the Individual is permitted, compelled, to 
seek his own material and mental salvation as best he may. 
The trouble with a democracy as opposed to an autocracy, 
with a line of titled idlers permitted the gift of leisure and 
art indulgence, is that there is no central force or group to 
foster art, to secure letters and art in their inalienable rights, 
to make of superior thought a noble and a sacred thing. I 
am not saying that democracy will not yet produce such 
a central force or group. I believe it can and will. I be- 
lieve when the time arrives it may prove to be better than 
any form of hereditary autocracy. But I am talking about 



l88 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the mental, the social, the artistic condition of America as 
it is to-day. 

To me it is a thing for laughter, if not for tears : one hun- 
dred million Americans, rich (a fair percentage of them, any- 
how) beyond the dreams of avarice, and scarcely a sculptor, 
a poet, a singer, a novelist, an actor, a musician, worthy of 
the name. One hundred and forty years (almost two hun- 
dred, counting the Colonial days) of the most prosperous social 
conditions, a rich soil, incalculable deposits of gold, silver, 
and precious and useful metals and fuels of all kinds, a land 
amazing in its mountains, its streams, its valley prospects, 
its wealth-yielding powers, and now its tremendous cities 
and far-flung facilities for travel and trade, and yet con- 
template it. Artists, poets, thinkers, where are they ? Run 
them over in your mind. Has it produced a single phi- 
losopher of the first rank — a Spencer, a Nietzsche, a Scho- 
penhauer, a Kant.? Do I hear someone offering Emerson 
as an equivalent ? or James } Has it produced a historian of 
the force of either Macaulay or Grote or Gibbon ? A novelist 
of the rank of Turgenev, de Maupassant, or Flaubert .? A 
scientist of the standing of Crookes or Roentgen or Pasteur ? 
A critic of the insight and force of Taine, Sainte-Beuve, or 
the de Goncourts } A dramatist the equivalent of Ibsen, 
Chekhov, Shaw, Hauptmann, Brieux .? An actor, since 
Booth, of the force of Coquelin, Sonnenthal, Forbes-Robert- 
son, or Sarah Bernhardt.? Since Whitman, one poet, 
Edgar Lee Masters. In painting, a Whistler, an Inness, a 
Sargent. Who else .? (And two of these shook the dust of 
our shores forever.) Inventors, yes. By the hundreds, 
one might almost say by the thousands. Some of them 
amazing enough, in all conscience, world figures, and endur- 
ing for all time. But of what relationship to art — the su- 
preme freedom of the mind .? . . . 

I am constantly astonished by the thousands of men, ex- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 89 

ceedingly capable in some mechanical or narrow technical 
sense, whose world or philosophic vision is that of a child. 
As a nation, we accept and believe naively in such impossible 
things. I am not thinking alone of the primary tenets of 
all religions, which are manifestly based on nothing at all, 
and which millions of Americans, along with the humbler 
classes of other countries, accept, but rather of those sterner 
truths which life itself teaches — the unreliability of human 
nature; the crass chance which strikes down and destroys 
our finest dreams; the fact that man in all his relations is 
neither good nor evil, but both. 

The American, by some hocus pocus of atavism, has seem- 
ingly borrowed or retained from lower English middle-class 
puritans all their fol de rol notions about making human 
nature perfect by fiat or edict — the written word, as it were, 
which goes with all religions. So, although by reason of the 
coarsest and most brutal methods, we, as a nation, have built 
up one of the most interesting and domineering oligarchies 
in the world, we are still by no means aware of the fact. 

All men, in the mind of the unthinking American, are still 
free and equal. They have in themselves certain inalienable 
rights; what they are, when you come to test them, no 
human being can discover. Your so-called rights disappear 
like water before a moving boat. They do not exist. Life 
here, as elsewhere, comes down to the brutal methods of 
nature itself. The rich strike the poor at every turn; the 
poor defend themselves and further their lives by all the 
tricks which stark necessity can conceive. No inalienable 
right keeps the average cost of living from rising steadily, 
while most of the salaries of our idealistic Americans are 
stationary. No inalienable right has ever yet prevented the 
strong from either tricking or browbeating the weak. And, 
although by degrees the average American everywhere is 
feeling more and more keenly the sharpening struggle for 



190 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

existence, yet his faith in his impossible ideals is as fresh as 
ever. God will save the good American, and seat him at 
His right hand on the Golden Throne. 

On earth the good American is convinced that the nar- 
rower and more colorless his life here the greater his op- 
portunity for a more glorious life hereafter. His pet theory 
is that man is made useful and successful and constructive 
— a perfect man, in short — by the kinds and numbers of 
things he is not permitted to do or think or say. A pale, 
narrow, utterly restrained life, according to his theory, is 
the perfect one. If one accepted St. James's version and 
kept utterly unspotted by the world, entirely out of contact 
with it, he would be the perfect American. Indeed, ever 
since the Mayflower landed, and the country began to grow 
westward, we have been convinced that we were destined to 
make the Ten Commandments, in all their arbitrary per- 
fection, work. One might show readily enough that America 
attained its amazing position in life by reason of the fact 
that, along with boundless opportunities, the Ten Com- 
mandments did not and do not work, but what would be the 
use ? With one hand the naive American takes and executes 
with all the brutal insistence of nature itself; with the 
other he writes glowing platitudes concerning brotherly 
love, virtue, purity, truth, etc., etc. 

A part of this right or left hand tendency, as the case 
might be, is seen in the constant desire of the American to 
reform something. No country in the world, not even Eng- 
land, the mother of fol de rol reforms, is so prolific in these 
frail ventures as this great country of ours. In turn we have 
had campaigns for the reform of the atheist, the drunkard, 
the lecher, the fallen woman, the buccaneer financier, the 
drug fiend, the dancer, the theatregoer, the reader of novels, 
the wearer of low-neck dresses, and surplus jewelry — in 
fact, every human taste and frivolity, wherever sporadically 



ILLUSTRATIONS I91 

it has chanced to manifest itself with any interesting hu- 
man force. Your reformer's idea is that any human being, 
to be a successful one, must be a pale spindling sprout, in- 
capable of any vice or crime. And all the while the thresh- 
ing sea of life is sounding in his ears. The thief, the lecher, 
the drunkard, the fallen woman, the greedy, the inordinately 
vain, as in all ages past, pass by his door, and are not the 
whit less numerous for the unending campaigns which have 
been launched to save them. In other words, human na- 
ture is human nature, but your American cannot be made to 
believe it. 

He will not give up the illusion which was piled safely 
in the hold of the Mayflower when it set sail. He is going 
to reform man and the world willy nilly, and, while in his 
rampant idealism he is neglecting to build up a suitable army 
and navy wherewith to defend himself, he is busy propagating 
little cults whereby man is to be made less vigorous, more 
the useless anaemic thing that he has in mind. 

Personally, my quarrel is with America's quarrel with 
original thought. It is so painful to me to see one after 
another of our alleged reformers tilting Don Quixote-like at 
the giant windmills of fact. We are to have no pictures 
which the puritan and the narrow, animated by an obsolete 
dogma, cannot approve of. We are to have no theatres, 
no motion pictures, no books, no public exhibitions of any 
kind, no speech even, which will in any way contravene his 
limited view of life. A few years ago it was the humble 
dealer in liquor whose life was anathematized, and whose 
property was descended upon with torches, axes, and bombs. 
Now comes prohibition. A little later, our cities growing 
and the sections devoted to the worship of Venus becoming 
more manifest, the Vice Crusader was bred, and we had 
the spectacle of whole areas of fallen women scattered to 
the four winds, and allowed to practise separately what 



192 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

they could not do collectively. Then came Mr. Comstock, 
vindictive, persistent, and with a nose and a taste for the 
profane and erotic, such as elsewhere has not been equaled 
since. Pictures, books, the theatre, the dance, the studio — 
all came under his watchful eye. During the twenty or 
thirty years in which he acted as a United States Postoffice 
Inspector, he was, because of his dull charging against things 
which he did not rightly understand, never out of the white 
light of publicity which he so greatly craved. One month 
it would be a novel by D'Annunzio ; another, a set of works 
by Balzac or de Maupassant, found in the shade of some 
grovelly bookseller's shop ; the humble photographer at- 
tempting a nude ; the painter who allowed his reverence for 
Raphael to carry him too far; the poet who attempted a 
recrudescence of Don Juan in modern iambics, was immedi- 
ately seized upon and hauled before an equally dull magis- 
trate, there to be charged with his offense and to be fined 
accordingly. All this is being continued with emphasis. 

Then came the day of the White Slave Chasers, and now 
no American city, and no backwoods Four Corners, however 
humble, is complete without a vice commission of some kind, 
or at least a local agent or representative, charged with the 
duty of keeping the art, the literature, the press, and the 
private lives of all those at hand up to that standard of per- 
fection which only the dull can set for themselves. 

Several years ago, when the white slave question was at 
its whitest heat, the problem of giving expression to its 
fundamental aspects was divided between raiding plays 
which attemped to show the character of the crime in too 
graphic a manner, and licensing those which appealed to 
the intelligence of those who were foremost in the crusade. 
Thus we had the spectacle of an uncensored, but neverthe- 
less approved, ten-reel film showing more details of the 
crime and better methods of securing white slaves, than any 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 93 

other production of the day, running undisturbed to packed 
houses all over the country, while two somewhat more 
dramatic, but far less effective distributors, of information 
in the way of plays were successfully harried from city to 
city and finally withdrawn. 

Shakespeare has been ordered from the schools in some of 
the states. A production of "Antony and Cleopatra" has 
been raided in Chicago. Japanese prints of a high art 
value, intended for the seclusion of a private collection, have 
been seized and the most valuable of them held to be de- 
stroyed. By turns, an artistic fountain to Heine in New 
York, loan exhibits of paintings in Denver, Kansas City, 
and elsewhere, scores of books by Stevenson, James Lane 
Allen, Frances H. Burnett, have been attacked, not only, as 
in the case of the latter, with the invisible weapons of the law, 
as might be expected, but, in regard to the former, with 
actual axes. A male dancer of repute and some artistic 
ability, has been raided publicly by the vice crusaders for 
his shameless exposure of his person ! No play, no picture, 
no book, no public or private jubilation of any kind, is 
complete any more without its vice attack. . . . 

This sort of interference with serious letters is, to me, the 
worst and most corrupting form of espionage which is con- 
ceivable to the human mind. It plumbs the depths of ig- 
norance and intolerance; if not checked, it can and will 
dam initiative and inspiration at the source. Life, if it is 
anything at all, is a thing to be observed, studied, inter- 
preted. We cannot know too much about it, because as 
yet we know nothing. It is our one great realm of dis- 
covery. The artist, if left to himself, may be safely trusted 
to observe, synchronize, and articulate human knowledge 
in the most palatable and delightful form. Human nature 
will seek and have what it needs, the vice crusaders to the 
contrary notwithstanding. There is no compulsion on any 



194 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

one to read. One must pay to do so. What is more, one 
must have taste inherently to select, and a brain and a heart 
to understand. With all these safeguards and a double 
score of capable critics in every land to praise or blame, 
what need really is there for a censor, or a dozen of them, 
each far less fitted than any of the working critics, to indulge 
his personal predilection and opposition, and to appeal to 
the courts if he is disagreed with ^ 

Personally, I rise to protest. I look on this interference 
with serious art and serious minds as an outrage. I fear for 
the ultimate intelligence of America, which in all conscience, 
judged by world standards, is low enough. In our youth 
and conceit we think ourselves wise. Intelligent cosmopoli- 
tans actually know that our ignorance is appalling. In the 
main we are unbelievably dull and wishy-washy. Now ap- 
pears a band of wasp-like censors to put the finishing touches 
on a literature and an art that has struggled all too feebly 
as it is. Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Thoreau, each in 
turn was the butt and jibe of unintelligent Americans, until 
by now we are well nigh the laughing stock of the world. 
Where is it to end ? When will we lay aside our swaddling 
clothes, enforced on us by ignorant, impossible puritans and 
their uneducated followers, and stand up, free thinking 
men and women .? Life is to be learned as much from books 
and art as from life itself — almost more so, in my judgment. 
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings 
of misery and travail. Shall the dull and the self-seeking 
and the self-advertising close this store on the groping human 
mind .? 



ILLUSTRATIONS 195 

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 

By William James ^ 

The war against war Is going to be no holiday excursion 
or camping party. The miHtary feelings are too deeply 
grounded to abdicate their place among our ideals until 
better substitutes are offered than the glory and shame that 
come to nations as well as to individuals from the ups and 
downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. There is 
something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation 
to war. Ask all our millions, north and south, whether they 
would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have our 
war for the Union expunged from history, and the record 
of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for 
that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a hand- 
ful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those ef- 
forts, those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of 
what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession 
worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those 
same people whether they would be willing in cold blood to 
start another civil war now to gain another similar posses- 
sion, and not one man or women would vote for the prop- 
osition. In modern eyes, precious though wars may be, 
they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal har- 
vest. Only when forced upon one, only when an enemy's 
injustice leaves us no alternative, is a war now thought 
permissible. 

It was not thus In ancient times. The earlier men were 
hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, 
loot the village and possess the females, was the most 
profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus 

^ Reprinted by special permission of the American Association for Inter- 
national Conciliation. 



196 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and 
peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle 
with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. 

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a 
better avenue to plunder ; but modern man inherits all the 
innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. 
Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect upon 
him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong 
life; it is life in extremis; war-taxes are the only ones men 
never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us. 

History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one long recital 
of how Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector killed. 
No detail of the wounds they made is spared us, and the 
Greek mind fed upon the story. Greek history is a panorama 
of jingoism and imperialism — war for war's sake, all the 
citizens being warriors. It is horrible reading, because of 
the irrationality of it all — save for the purpose of making 
"history" — and the history is that of the utter ruin of a 
civilization in intellectual respects perhaps the highest the 
earth has ever seen. 

Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, 
slaves, excitement, were their only motives. In the Pelo- 
ponnesian war, for example, the Athenians ask the in- 
habitants of Melos (the island where the "Venus of Milo" 
was found), hitherto neutral, to own their lordship. The 
envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in 
full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have 
satisfied Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact what they 
can," said the Athenians, "and the weak grant what they 
must." When the Meleans say that sooner than be slaves 
they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply: "Of the 
gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of their 
nature, wherever they can rule they will. This law was 
not made by us, and we are not the first to have acted upon 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 97 

it; we did but inherit it, and we know that you and all 
mankind, if you were as strong as we are, would do as we 
do. So much for the gods ; we have told you why we expect 
to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, the 
Meleans still refused, and their town was taken. "The 
Athenians," Thucydides quietly says, "thereupon put to 
death all who were of military age and made slaves of the 
women and children. They then colonized the island, 
sending thither five hundred settlers of their own." 

Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing 
but an orgy of power and plunder, made romantic by the 
character of the hero. There was no rational principle in 
It, and the moment he died his generals and governors at- 
tacked one another. The cruelty of those times is incredible. 
When Rome finally conquered Greece, Paulus ^milius was 
told by the Roman Senate to reward his soldiers for their 
toil by "giving" them the old kingdom of Epirus. They 
sacked seventy cities and carried off a hundred and fifty 
thousand inhabitants as slaves. How many they killed I 
know not; but in Etolia they killed all the senators, five 
hundred and fifty in number. Brutus was "the noblest 
Roman of them all," but to reanimate his soldiers on the 
eve of Philippi he similarly promises to give them the cities 
of Sparta and Thessalonica to ravage, if they win the fight. 

Such was the gory nurse that trained societies to cohesive- 
ness. We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the 
capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have 
to thank this cruel history. Dead men tell no tales, and if 
there were any tribes of other type than this they have left 
no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our 
bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't 
breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on 
the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a cer- 
tain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the 



198 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Boer war both governments began with bluff, but couldn't 
stay there, the military tension was too much for them. 
In 1898 our people had read the word WAR in letters three 
inches high for three months in every newspaper. The 
pliant politician McKinley was swept away by their eager- 
ness, and our squalid war with Spain became a necessity. 

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental 
mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong 
as ever, but are confronted by reflective criticisms which 
sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers 
are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure 
loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable motives, 
and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to 
the enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities 
repeat without ceasing, arm solely for "peace," Germany 
and Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory. "Peace" 
in military mouths to-day is a synonym for "war expected." 
The word has become a pure provocative, and no govern- 
ment wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed 
in a newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say 
that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing, now in 
posse, now in actu. It may even reasonably be said that 
the intensely sharp competitive preparation for war by the 
nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that 
the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mas- 
tery gained during the "peace "-interval. 

It is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed 
a sort of double personality. If we take European nations, 
no legitimate Interest of any one of them would seem to 
justify the tremendous destructions which a war to com- 
pass it would necessarily entail. It would seem as though 
common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agree- 
ment in every conflict of honest Interests. I myself think 
it our bounden duty to believe in such international ration- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 1 99 

ality as possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately 
hard it is to bring the peace-party and the war-party to- 
gether, and I beheve that the difficulty is .due to certain 
deficiencies In the program of pacificism which set the mili- 
tarist imagination strongly, and to a certain extent justifi- 
ably, against it. In the whole discussion both sides are on 
imaginative and sentimental ground. It Is but one Utopia 
against another, and everything one says must be abstract 
and hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and caution, I 
will try to characterize in abstract strokes the opposite 
imaginative forces, and point out what to my own very fallible 
mind seems the best Utopian hypothesis, the most promising 
line of conciliation. 

In my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will refuse to 
speak of the bestial side of the war-regime (already done jus- 
tice to by many writers) and consider only the higher aspects 
of militaristic sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks dis- 
creditable ; nor does any one deny that war is the romance 
of history. But Inordinate ambitions are the soul of every 
patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all 
romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded 
everywhere, and especially the professional military class, 
refuse to admit for a moment that war may be a transitory 
phenomenon In social evolution. The notion of a sheep's 
paradise like that revolts, they say, our higher imagination. 
Where then would be the steeps of life ? If war had ever 
stopped, we should have to reinvent It, on this view, to 
redeem life from flat degeneration. 

Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it 
religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to 
the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart 
from any question of profit, it Is an absolute good, we are 
told, for it Is human nature at Its highest dynamic. Its 
"horrors" are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only 



200 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of 
co-education and zoophily, of "consumer's leagues" and 
"associated charities," of industrialism unlimited, and 
feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any- 
more ! Fie upon such a cattle yard of a planet ! 

So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy 
minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree 
partaking of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our 
ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardi- 
hood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for 
the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a 
type of military character which every one feels that the race 
should never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its 
superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keep- 
ing military characters in stock — of keeping them, if not 
for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of per- 
fection, — so that Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles 
may not end by making everything else disappear from the 
face of nature. 

This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost 
soul of army-writings. Without any exception known to 
me, militarist authors take a highly mystical view of their 
subject, and regard war as a biological or sociological neces- 
sity, uncontrolled by ordinary psychological checks and 
motives. When the time of development is ripe the war 
must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded 
are invariably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent 
human obligation. General Homer Lea, in his recent book 
"The Valor of Ignorance," plants himself squarely on this 
ground. Readiness for war is for him the essence of national- 
ity, and ability in it the supreme measure of the health of 
nations. 

Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary — they 
must necessarily expand or shrink, according to their vi- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 20I 

tality or decrepitude. Japan now is culminating; and by 
the fatal law in question it is impossible that her statesmen 
should not long since have entered, with extraordinary fore- 
sight, upon a vast policy of conquest — the game in which 
the first moves were her wars with China and Russia and 
her treaty with England, and of which the final objective 
is the capture of the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, 
Alaska, and the whole of our coast west of the Sierra Passes. 
This will give Japan what her ineluctable vocation as a 
state absolutely forces her to claim, the possession of the 
entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep designs we 
Americans have, according to our author, nothing but our 
conceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our corruption, 
and our feminism. General Lea makes a minute technical 
comparison of the military strength which we at present 
could oppose to the strength of Japan, and concludes that the 
islands, Alaska, Oregon, and Southern California, would 
fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco must sur- 
render in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three 
or four months the war would be over, and our republic, 
unable to regain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect 
sufficiently, would then "disintegrate," until perhaps some 
Csesar should arise to weld us again into a nation. 

A dismal forecast indeed ! Yet not unplausible, if the men- 
tality of Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which 
history shows so many examples, and which is all that Gen- 
eral Lea seems able to imagine. But there is no reason to 
think that women can no longer be the mothers of Napo- 
leonic or Alexandrian characters ; and if these come in 
Japan and find their opportunity, just such surprises as 
"The Valor of Ignorance" paints may lurk in ambush for 
us. Ignorant as we still are of the innermost recesses of 
Japanese mentality, we may be foolhardy to disregard such 
possibilities. 



202 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Other militarists are more complex and more moral in 
their considerations. The "Philosophic des Krieges," by 
S. R. Steinmetz, is a good example. War, according to this 
author, is an ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the 
nations in its balance. It is the essential form of the state, 
and the only function in which peoples can employ all their 
powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible 
save as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for 
which some vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, 
cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, in- 
ventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor — 
there isn't a moral or intellectual point of superiority that 
doesn't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls the peoples 
upon one another. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht; 
and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run 
chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues. 

The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues 
anyhow, superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in 
military competition ; but the strain on them, being in- 
finitely intenser in the latter case, makes war infinitely more 
searching as a trial. No ordeal is comparable to its win- 
nowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men into co- 
hesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human 
nature adequately develop its capacity. The only alter- 
native is "degeneration." 

Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, 
short as it is, takes much into account. Its upshot can, it 
seems to me, be summed up in Simon Patten's word, that 
mankind was nursed in pain and fear, and that the transition 
to a "pleasure-economy" may be fatal to a being wielding no 
powers of defense against its disintegrative influences. If we 
speak of tht fear of emancipation from the fear-regime, we put 
the whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding our- 
selves now taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 203 

Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to 
lead back to two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one 
aesthetic, and the other moral : unwillingness, first to en- 
visage a future in which army-life, with its many elements 
of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in which the 
destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided quickly, 
thrillingly, and tragically, by force, but only gradually 
and insipidly by "evolution"; and, secondly, unwillingness 
to see the supreme theatre of human strenuousness closed, 
and the splendid military aptitudes of men doomed to keep 
always in a state of latency and never show themselves in 
action. These insistent unwillingnesses, no less than other 
aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, it seems to me, to be 
listened to and respected. One cannot meet them effec- 
tively by mere counter-insistency on war's expensiveness 
and horror. The horror makes the thrill ; and when the 
question is of getting the extremest and supremest out of 
human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious. The 
weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident — 
pacificism makes no converts from the military party. The 
military party denies neither the bestiality nor the horror, 
nor the expense ; it only says that these things tell but half 
the story. It only says that war is worth them ; that, tak- 
ing human nature as a whole. Its wars are its best protection 
against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind 
cannot afford to adopt a peace-economy. 

Pacificists ought to enter more deeply into the sesthetical 
and ethical point of view of their opponents. Do that 
first in any controversy, says J. J. Chapman, then move the 
point, and your opponent will follow. So long as anti- 
militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary func- 
tion, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might 
say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail 
to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a 



204 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pic- 
tured in the Utopias they paint are all too weak and tame 
to touch the military-minded. Tolstoy's pacificism is the 
only exception to this rule, for it is profoundly pessimistic 
as regards all this world's values, and makes the fear of the 
Lord furnish the moral spur provided elsewhere by the 
fear of the enemy. But our socialistic peace-advocates all 
believe absolutely in this world's values ; and instead of the 
fear of the Lord and the fear of the enemy, the only fear 
they reckon with is the fear of poverty if one be lazy. This 
weakness pervades all the socialistic literature with which 
I am acquainted. Even in Lowes Dickinson's exquisite 
dialogue,^ high wages and short hours are the only forces 
invoked for overcoming man's distaste for repulsive kinds 
of labor. Meanwhile men at large still live as they always 
have lived, under a paln-and-fear economy — for those of 
us who live in an ease-economy are but an island in the 
stormy ocean — and the whole atmosphere of present-day 
Utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to peo- 
ple who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It 
suggests, in truth, ubiquitous inferiority. 

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is 
the keynote of the military temper. "Dogs, would you 
live forever?" shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes," say 
our Utopians, "let us live forever, and raise our level grad- 
ually." The best thing about our "inferiors" to-day is 
that they are as tough as nails, and physically and morally 
almost as insensitive. Utopianism would see them soft 
and squeamish, while militarism would keep their callous- 
ness, but transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic, 
needed by "the service," and redeemed by that from the 
suspicion of inferiority. All the qualities of a man acquire 
dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity 
1 "Justice and Liberty," N. Y., 1909. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 205 

that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his 
own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an 
army for nourishing such pride ; but it has to be confessed 
that the only sentiment which the image of pacific cosmo- 
politan industrialism is capable of arousing in countless 
worthy breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to such a 
collectivity. It is obvious that the United States of America 
as they exist to-day impress a mind like General Lea's as 
so much human blubber. Where is the sharpness and 
precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's own, 
or another's.? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the 
unconditional duty ^ Where is the conscription ? Where 
is the blood-tax ? Where is anything that one feels honored 
by belonging to 1 

Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess 
my own Utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and 
in the gradual advent of some sort of a socialistic equilibrium. 
The fatalistic view of the war-function is to me nonsense, for 
I know that war-making is due to definite motives and 
subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just 
like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations 
are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intel- 
lectual refinement with the sciences of production, I see 
that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own mon- 
strosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced 
by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause 
against them. I see no reason why all this should not apply 
to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look forward to 
a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as be- 
tween civilized peoples. 

All these beliefs of mine put me squarely Into the anti- 
militarist party. But I do not believe that peace either 
ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the 
states pacifically organized preserve some of the old elements 



206 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-econ- 
omy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or 
less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting 
we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities 
which answer to our real position upon this only partly hos- 
pitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods 
continue the manhness to which the military mind so faith- 
fully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; 
intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private in- 
terest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock 
upon which states are built — unless, indeed, we wish for 
dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for 
contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of 
crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed 
anywhere in their neighborhood. 

The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirm- 
ing that the martial virtues, although originally gained by 
the race through war, are absolute and permanent human 
goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military 
form are, after all, only specifications of a more general com- 
petitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no rea- 
son for supposing them to be its last form. Men now are 
proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a 
murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by 
so doing they may fend off subjection. But who can be 
sure that other aspects of one^s country may not, with time 
and education and suggestion enough, come to be regarded 
with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame .^ Why 
should men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax 
to belong to a collectivity superior in any ideal respect ^ 
Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the 
community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever ^ 
Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic pas- 
sion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the 



ILLUSTRATIONS 207 

whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the 
old morals of military honour, a stable system of morals of 
civic honour builds itself up. What the whole community 
comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The 
war-function has graspt us so far; but constructive inter- 
ests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on 
the individual a hardly lighter burden. 

Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is noth- 
ing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, 
that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary con- 
ditions once for all are such, and we can stand it. But that 
so many men, by mere accidents of birth and opportunity, 
should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain and hard- 
ness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no 
vacation, while others natively no more deserving never get 
any taste of this campaigning life at all, — this is capable 
of arousing indignation in reflective minds. It may end by 
seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing 
but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease. 
If now — and this is my idea — there were, instead of mili- 
tary conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful 
population to form for a certain number of years a part of 
the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend 
to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the com- 
monwealth would follow. The military ideals of hardihood 
and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of 
the people; no one would remain blind as the luxurious 
classes now are blind, to man's real relations to the globe 
he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard founda- 
tions of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight 
trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing, clothes- 
washing, and window-washing, to road-building and tunnel- 
making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of 
skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, accord- 



208 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

ing to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of 
them, and to come back into society with healthier sympa- 
thies and soberer ideas. They would have paid their blood- 
tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare 
against nature, they would tread the earth more proudly, 
the women would value them more highly, they would be 
better fathers and teachers of the following generation. 

Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that 
would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would 
bear, would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the 
manly virtues which the military party is so afraid of see- 
ing disappear in peace. We should get toughness without 
callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as pos- 
sible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is 
temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole 
remainder of one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" 
of war. So far, war has been the only force that can disci- 
pline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline 
is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But 
I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames 
of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are 
capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have 
sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving 
manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skillful 
propagandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic 
opportunities. 

The martial type of character can be bred without war. 
Strenuous honour and disinterestedness abound elsewhere. 
Priests and medical men are in a fashion educated to it, and 
we should all feel some degree of it imperative if we were 
conscious of our work as an obligatory service to the state. 
We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our 
pride would rise accordingly. We could be poor, then, 
without humiliation, as army officers now are. The only 



ILLUSTRATIONS 209 

thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as 
past history has inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, 
as usual, sees the centre of the situation. "In many ways," 
he says, "military organization is the most peaceful of 
activities. When the contemporary man steps from the 
street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulter- 
ation, underselling and intermittent employment, into the 
barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher social plane, into an 
atmosphere of service and co-operation and of infinitely 
more honourable emulations. Here at least men are not 
flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no 
immediate work for them to do. They are fed and drilled 
and trained for better services. Here at least a man is sup- 
posed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by 
self-seeking. And beside the feeble and irregular endowment 
of research by commercialism, its little short-sighted snatches 
at profit by innovation and scientific economy, see how re- 
markable is the steady and rapid development of method 
and appliances in naval and military affairs ! Nothing is 
more striking than to compare the progress of civil con- 
veniences which has been left almost entirely to the trader, 
to the progress in military apparatus during the last few 
decades. The house-appliances of to-day, for example, are 
little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of to- 
day is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful 
fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. 
Houses a couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory 
places of residence, so little have our standards risen. But 
the rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all com- 
parison inferior to those we possess ; in power, in speed, in 
convenience alike. No one has a use now for such superan- 
nuated things." ^ 

Wells adds ^ that he thinks that the conceptions of order 
1 " First and Last Things," 1908, p. 215. * Ibid.y p. 226. 

P 



2IO FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

and discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of 
physical fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal responsi- 
bility, which universal military duty is now teaching Eu- 
ropean nations, will remain a permanent acquisition, when 
the last ammunition has been used in the fireworks that 
celebrate the final peace. I believe as he does. It would 
be simply preposterous if the only force that could work 
ideals of honour and standards of efficiency into English or 
American natures should be the fear of being killed by the 
Germans or the Japanese. Great indeed is Fear; but it is 
not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us 
believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher 
ranges of men's spiritual energy. The amount of alteration 
in public opinion which my Utopia postulates is vastly less 
than the difference between the mentality of those black 
warriors who pursued Stanley's party on the Congo with 
their cannibal war-cry of "Meat! Meat" and that of the 
"general-staff" of any civilized nation. History has seen 
the latter interval bridged over : the former one can be 
bridged over much more easily. 

THE PROLONGATION OF PEACE ^ 

By Simeon Strunsky 

One historic controversy which history has passed over 
in silence goes back only a matter of twenty-odd years to 
the time when Behring announced the discovery of his anti- 
toxin for diphtheria. Of course people immediately took 
sides. Against Behring and his serum it was argued that the 
Klebs-Loeffler bacillus had been active from the beginning 
of mankind, not to mention the rabbit and the guinea-pig. 
It was absurd to suppose that the human body would ever 

1 Reprinted from "The Yale Review" by special permission of the edi- 
tors, and the author of the essay. 



ILUSTRATIONS 211 

cease to be a host for some form of parasite or other. Chil- 
dren had always been dying of acute sore throat and would 
continue to die. Diphtheria, dispassionately .regarded, had 
its role in natural selection. It eliminated the weaklings, 
and so worked directly against racial degeneracy. But even 
more important were its effects in the spiritual progress of 
mankind. Diphtheria was a moral tonic for. parentage. 
It braced up the mothers of the race. It supplied them 
with an opportunity for displaying the valuable qualities of 
service and self-sacrifice while the child was sick, and of 
tight-lipped resignation when the child died. 

The advocates of antitoxin usually replied with a mixture 
of practical and humanitarian considerations. They pointed 
out the enormous economic waste attributable to the Klebs- 
Loeffler bacillus. Assuming that every child, when he grew 
up, represented an addition of at least $5,000 to the national 
wealth, the ravages of diphtheria easily ran into hundreds 
of million dollars annually. There was the heavy cost of 
medical service. There was the large expenditure connected 
with the final disposition of the little victims who failed to 
recover. There was the loss of family income, arising either 
from the father's enforced idleness at the sick bed, as 
often happens, or in any case from a depressed vitality 
which for several months was bound to affect the father's 
earning powers. From the humanitarian point of view 
people deplored the wastage of human life, regarded not 
as an economic factor but as something desirable in itself. 
They drew heart-rending pictures of little faces aglow 
with fever, of little bodies contorted with pain, of little 
throats choking for breath. They spoke of the agony of 
mothers. 

The force of this argument the anti-Behringites did not 
attempt to deny. They yielded to no one in their pity for 
suffering. But as men who faced life squarely they could 



212 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

only ask : How shall it be otherwise ? Has Behring found 
the secret of immortality ? 

If this controversy, as I have said, has been neglected by 
the historians and is not to be traced even in the newspaper 
files of the period, the probable reason is that the controversy 
never took place ; at least not in the exact form I have given 
to it. And yet that is precisely the form which the debate 
would have assumed if the quarrel over the Klebs-Loeffler 
bacillus had been carried on after the fashion in which the 
great quarrel over the Gobineau-Bernhardi war bacillus is 
conducted to-day. On the one hand, you have the same 
insistence on the fact that war always has been, and there- 
fore, in all likelihood, always will be ; the same emphasis on 
war as a biological factor in the survival of races ; the same 
glorification of war as a moral factor, its enmity to sloth, 
cowardice, luxury, selfishness. On the other hand, you have 
the economic wastage of the battlefield, the prodigious cost 
of armaments, young life blasted in its promise, trenches, 
hospitals, widows, orphans. And the outcome of the debate 
is the same. "No one deplores more than I do the horrors 
of war," says Gobineau-Bernhardi, "but have you found a 
way to stop all war.''" 

Thus both sides keep hard at it, in utter disregard of the 
fact that since the discovery of an antitoxin in 1894 the 
mortality rate for diphtheria has been reduced from forty- 
five per cent to ten per cent. 

It is amazing how easily men who believe that war is an 
evil thing will let themselves be manoeuvred into the indefen- 
sible position of maintaining that the only alternative to war 
according to Bernhardi is the abolition of war. Either it 
must be twenty years of world history splashed with at least 
half a dozen heavy blood-lettings — Chino-Japanese war, 
Spanish-American war, Boer war, Russo-Japanese war, 
Balkan wars, the European war — or else it must be an 



ILLUSTRATIONS 21 3 

endless future of unbroken peace. Only it is wrong to say 
manoeuvred. The anti-militarist too often plunges of his 
own free will into this Sedan of perpetual peace. It is true 
that there are some who believe that war may be eliminated 
provided we make the effort and pay the price. But there 
are a great many of us who do not go so far as Tolstoi and 
non-resistance, yet for whom there is apparently no middle 
ground between Gobineau-Bernhardi on the one hand and 
the dream of perpetual peace on the other. We feel that 
six great wars and a dozen small wars in the course of twenty 
years are an evil and unnecessary thing. "Oh, then, you 
believe there is a time coming when men will forget how to 
fight, when Frenchmen and Germans and Hindus and 
Japanese will foregather like the Biblical lion and lamb?" 
No, that is not what we believe. But radical Bernhardi- 
ism and radical pacifism have so shaped the debate that 
apparently you must be with one or the other. Between the 
two lies No Man's Land. And the man who is nearer in 
heart to the pacifist ideal, lets it go at that, puts on the 
pacifist uniform, and shoulders a gun in defense of a cause 
that is not altogether his own. 

He forgets, as I have already said, that it is not necessary 
to bring forward the elixir of life as an alternative to letting 
children die of diphtheria, that a reduction in mortality from 
forty-five per cent to ten per cent is a very good thing in 
itself. The scientists at the Rockefeller Institute are not 
tackling the problem of the elimination of death, but they 
are very much concerned with the problem of prolonging 
life. Ever so much has been written and said about the 
elimination of war, and very little about the prolongation of 
peace. 

Coupled with this fundamental error of conception which 
speaks of the "end of war," of a "permanent peace," of a 
"warless world," is the error of judgment which would have 



214 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the great ideal attained through some mechanical device. It 
is seemingly inevitable that it should be so. If peace is to 
be eternal and unshaken, you cannot turn for prevention to 
that erratic, untamed, ungauged, and utterly unscientific 
instrument, the human heart. The only perfect safety de- 
vices against rear-end collisions and faulty elevator cables 
are automatic devices. To the discussion of such automatic 
safeguards all sorts of minds and hearts have devoted them- 
selves. Scientifically trained minds and prophetic spirits, 
men to whom the problem appeals only as a problem and 
men to whom the ideal is a flaming and a holy thing, all 
agree in searching for the machine that will clutch the slip- 
ping cable of peace and hold it firm. 

It is now eighteen years since Jean de Bloch wrote a book 
in seven volumes to demonstrate that war had become im- 
possible. His was the technical argument. It was not a 
question whether peace is better than war. It was the simple 
fact that the business of slaughter had become so complicated 
and so perfected that war meant only a furious tugging 
back and forth without definite advantage. De Bloch laid 
stress on trench warfare which rendered the defensive in 
battle impregnable. He foresaw the role of the machine 
gun, of blockade, of wholesale starvation. After eighteen 
years de Bloch is now spoken of by students of war as hav- 
ing come into his own. The two years' deadlock in the 
trenches of Europe has vindicated him. The only thing 
that remains to be explained is the fact, that in spite of 
two years' deadlock, there is still going on in the European 
trenches something that has every appearance of being war. 

And there are some things which de Bloch did not fore- 
see. He anticipated the trench, but he did not foresee the 
monster guns which reduce trenches to rubbish. He fore- 
saw the machine gun, but he did not foresee the clouds of 
poison gas which drive the artillerist from his machine. But 



ILUSTRATIONS 21 5 

more than that. Assume that de Bloch had been right 
throughout and that war on land had indeed become impos- 
sible. There are other spheres for the aspiring soul of man. 
When men have lost the art of fighting on land, they will 
fight under the sea and in the air. When submarine and 
Zeppelin have found their antidote, men will fight at a dis- 
tance of two thousand miles with incendiary vibrations and 
explosive air waves. De Bloch allowed a psychological 
error to creep into his technical argument. He thought that 
war had become too terrible for the spirit of man. It is 
the idea which Mr. H. G. Wells has exploited in his imagina- 
tive forecasts of the future social order. When you can 
drop just one atomic bomb and wipe out Paris or Berlin, 
war will have become monstrous and impossible. But de 
Bloch and Mr. Wells have underestimated the capacities of 
the human soul for inflicting and enduring terror. After 
the murder of women and babes from the air, it is no longer 
easy to believe that a mechanical device like the atomic 
bomb will keep men from fighting forevermore. 

And just as Jean de Bloch, fifteen years before the Aus- 
trian ultimatum to Servia, had shown that war is technically 
bankrupt, Mr. Norman Angell proved, only two years be- 
fore the greatest of wars, that war was an economic impos- 
sibility. He showed that war brought with it no profit 
to the conqueror, that it entailed a wastage of wealth which 
drained winner and vanquished alike, and that it needed only 
the general realization of this truth to convince men of the 
futility of war. I am not of those who think that the pres- 
ent war has made speedy havoc of Mr. Angell's theories. 
On the contrary I think that of all preventives for war his 
comes nearest to the heart of the question by laying stress 
on the human factor, by postulating that people must grow 
aware of the folly of war before they will stop fighting. To 
that extent his remedy is not mechanical. His error con- 



2l6 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

sists in assuming that men, having attained that knowledge, 
will forever after live up to it. Perhaps he did not even 
mean to stress his point so far. The fact remains that Mr. 
Angell to-day has let himself be classed with the ultra-paci- 
fists. He has been manoeuvred into the position of main- 
taining that there is such a thing as a perpetual and unfailing 
guarantee against war. 

At first sight, the scheme outlined by William James in 
his little book, "A Moral Equivalent for War," seems to be 
anything but mechanical. He looks for the roots of war 
in the spirit of man. He recognizes that one of the great 
hindrances to the popularity of the pacifist ideal is the 
simple fact that peace is drab and that war is exciting. He 
knows that there enters into war the spirit of adventure, of 
service, and of sacrifice, and he sets himself to find an out- 
let for the militant Impulses of mankind. William James 
found it in the scheme of a civic army organized and disci- 
plined for the difficult and dangerous works of peace. A 
conscription of the young men of the nation for service in 
the coal mines, in the draining of swamps, in the building 
of public works, gives one a touch of Plato's republic, vivified 
by the spirit of modern humanitarianism. "Who will do 
the dirty work V has been the stock argument flung against 
the Socialists. The mobilized young men of the nation will 
do it, says William James, in substance, the same young 
men who have always been doing the world's dirty work 
on the battlefields ; provided you can train the young man 
to see that there is as much glory in digging a trench for 
an aqueduct as for a machine gun emplacement, that the 
smell of coal gas Is as ennobling a thing, at least, as the 
stink of poison fumes. 

A difiicult proviso, of course, and James did not under- 
estimate the difiiculty; but that is not the fatal point. 
Again the error emerges of supposing that when you have 



ILLUSTRATIONS 217 

organized your civic army you will have Infallibly prevented 
the organization of a military army, that you. will have elimi- 
nated war. A substitute is something which you put in 
place of something you have discarded. And when you 
offer a substitute for war you at once confront the ancient 
doubt whether war can ever be eliminated. William James's 
civic army Is the ancient sword beaten into a ploughshare 
and the spear Into a pruning hook. Translate James Into 
these terms and he offers no brighter chances of success than 
the original proposal has attained these twenty-five hundred 
years. A permanent, unbroken ploughshare and pruning- 
hook existence for the human race .'* No. But if Isaiah had 
spoken only of putting aside the sword and taking up the 
ploughshare, only of hanging up the spear and taking down 
the pruning hook, it would have come nearer to human limi- 
tations. No; William James's substitution of civic service 
for war, like Percy MacKaye's substitution of the commu- 
nity pageant for war, is after all a business of externals, of 
mechanical devices. When the blood Instinct surges up in 
man he will not go out into the stadium and dance It off 
with Mr. MacKaye. He may more probably pick up a 
shovel and sweat It off with William James ; but not always. 
One more of these mechanical devices against war and I 
have done. This time it is another variant of the economic 
argument. It is a fairly common position, but it has been 
best stated, perhaps, by Professor Edwin R. A. Sellgman 
in a paper contributed to a composite volume of studies on 
the great war. Professor Sellgman finds that economic ri- 
valry is at the bottom of the present war. He shows how 
capital, piling up In the old, rich nations and eager for new 
fields of exploitation, has brought about friction and con- 
flict. May we ever expect a condition of world peace, asks 
Professor Sellgman at the end of his article. Well, perhaps, 
yes. When the wealth of the earth has been equalized, when 



21 8 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

capital ceases to be exported, when China, for instance, has 
become as thoroughly saturated with capital as England is 
to-day, and holds out no temptations to British and German 
investors, the reason for war will have disappeared and 
permanent peace will come. 

Just when that will be, the reader is left to judge for him- 
self. Perhaps two hundred years from now China will be 
saturated with money to the exuding point and we may have 
world peace, unless it should turn out that the Congo and 
Morocco are not quite saturated with capital ; in which case 
we should probably have to wait another century. To tell 
the truth, it is plain that Professor Seligman does not believe 
in world peace. The subject does not interest him much 
till the very end of his article. Only then and in deference 
to the ancient dreams of the race, he permits himself a little 
idealistic speculation. Once he does take up the subject, he 
thinks millennially. He speaks only of permanent peace, and 
when it comes it will come through a mechanical device — 
capitalistic saturation. That there were wars in the world 
before capital began looking for foreign markets, that there 
might be things to quarrel about after international exploita- 
tion has ceased, does not enter into consideration. 

"How about world peace.?" says the pacifist. "Ah, yes, 
world peace, beautiful ideal, very. It will come some day, 
five hundred years from now, when China is saturated with 
money of her own. Kindly pass the cigars." But if one 
were to ask Professor Seligman not what he thinks of per- 
manent peace, but whether he considers it inevitable for 
China to be at war with somebody in the next fifty years, 
he would ponder the question a little more seriously. 

For the difference between permanent peace or the elimi- 
nation of war, as usually understood, and the prolongation 
of peace as I understand it, is this : world peace means 
fighting as much as ever till about the year 2345 and then 



ILLUSTRATIONS 21 9 

heaven forevermore. Whereas the prolongation of peace 
means that from now till the year 2345 and after there shall 
be six wars or a dozen wars only instead of the fifty wars 
indicated by our present ratio. I am ready to admit that 
war is as inevitable as death and taxes. Men will always 
pay taxes. The question is how high are taxes to be. Men 
will always die. The question is how soon. Men will 
always fight. The question is how often. 

When the anti-militarist speaks of a United States of 
Europe that is to arise after the war, he is accused of in- 
dulging in millennial dreams, and the only rejoinder he can 
think of is to demonstrate the feasibility of the millennium. 
It seems to occur to neither party that the establishment of 
the United States of Europe does not guarantee the mil- 
lennium. The United States of America had a civil war 
which lasted four years and this in spite of the fact that the 
States of the Union were not the European states of to-day. 
The Colonies had never engaged in war with each other. 
They had behind them almost none of the complex of forces 
and traditions that makes for international war. Eighty- 
five years after they had become a nation, they went to war 
with each other. And the United Counties of England have 
known civil war, and the United Provinces of France and 
the United Cantons of Switzerland. If it is the absolute 
prevention of war you are striving for, the Union of Europe 
is no guarantee. 

Why this knockdown argument against the United States 
of Europe is never used by the anti-pacifist I am unable 
to understand. Unless it be that the anti-pacifist instinc- 
tively recognizes that this argument would in the long run 
be fatal to himself. It would be a knockdown blow that 
would ultimately help to clarify his opponent's ideas. For 
if your believer in things as they have been were to say : 
"Well, what of your United States of Europe? Has there 



220 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

been no war within the United States of America?" the 
average pacifist would be compelled to sift his own thoughts 
and so discover what he really means. "Yes, one civil war 
in one hundred and forty years," he would reply, "and how 
many wars have there been in Europe during that time?" 
"Oh, then, you don't mean the abolition .of war, you mean 
reducing the frequency of war?" "Yes: isn't that worth 
while ?" "Oh, in that case," and the militarist immediately 
feels the disadvantage of combating a fairly reasonable citi- 
zen instead of a fanatic. 

It is the same when we speak of the establishment of a 
system of law and order among the nations such as obtains 
within each separate nation and each community. For them 
again your anti-pacifist is in a position to say, "Law as 
between nations ? Does law function so perfectly within the 
nations ? Is there no such thing as lynch law in the country 
you offer as a model for the United States of Europe ? Is 
there no such thing as the duello in Europe ? Is there no 
such thing as the unwritten law in America and the crime 
passionel in France, when public opinion virtually demands 
that in certain cases a man shall not go to court but shall 
shoot to kill?" To which the moderate pacifist: "True. 
It is nevertheless a fact that men do go to court ever so 
much more often than they used to and they use the dirk 
and pistol ever so much less. People do not shoot and stab 
on pretty nearly every occasion as they used to do." And 
there, of course, is the nub of the whole problem. 

How was it with the beginnings of the movement away 
from the curse of private warfare In the Dark Ages of Eu- 
rope ? The church took the matter in hand. But though 
the church subscribed to the ideal of everlasting and un- 
broken peace, the practical common sense of the ecclesias- 
tics of the tenth century suggested a moderate programme. 
The church councils did not impose peace everywhere and 



ILLUSTRATIONS 221 

every day in the week upon the militant barons. The peace 
of the church specified a number of classes against whom 
violence must not be'practised at any time — against clerics, 
women, pilgrims, peasants, against ecclesiastical buildings, 
cattle, and agricultural implements. The "truce of God,'* 
which grew out of the peace of the church, forbade private 
warfare on certain days and in certain seasons. It began 
with a prohibition against fighting of all kinds from noon 
on Saturday to prime on Monday. The barons may have 
chafed at the loss of a good day and a half but to some 
extent they obeyed. Within a short time the truce of God 
had been stretched from Wednesday evening to Monday 
morning and during all of Lent, Advent, the feasts of the 
blessed Virgin, the twelve apostles, and a few other saints. 
One can almost imagine the shrewd churchmen cautiously 
feeling the pulse of their public and adding a saint or two 
as the opportunity offered. At the height of its develop- 
ment the truce of God left less than one-quarter of the year 
for the barons to fight in and even within that restricted 
space the provisions of the peace of the church held good 
with regard to those classes and objects which were perpet- 
ually immune against private assault. 

I am Bound to confess that the authority from whom I 
have drawn my information goes on to say that the truce 
of God produced on the whole "surprisingly mediocre 
results." It was apparently more than human nature could 
stand that a baron who had been insulted in his honor and 
his interests on Thursday morning should wait till noon of 
the following Monday before exacting satisfaction. But 
some results there were. The begmning had been made, and 
when monarchy arose in the later centuries to assert its 
authority against the feudalists it borrowed the provisions 
of the truce of God and peace of the church and embodied 
them into the king's peace. From that time, I imagine, the 



222 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

progress of law and order simply meant a steady reduction 
in the number of private quarrels ; not because differences 
of opinion arose more frequently on a Sunday or within the 
bounds of a church building, or because of an increase in the 
number of classes immune against sudden assault, but pri- 
marily because of a reduction in the number of causes for 
which people felt it incumbent to fight. How this happened 
It is not difficult to surmise. If a baron did not like the color 
of his neighbor's mantle on Thursday morning and was 
prevented from fighting him on that cause till Monday noon, 
there was a chance that by Monday noon the offense would 
not seem so serious. In that way does habit fix its clutches 
on man. And in that way, I imagine, have we progressed 
from the time when men fought over the color of a coat or 
the theft of a sheep or because their sword hilts clashed in 
a crowd, to the present when men fight out private quarrels 
over the very few causes I have mentioned above. 

But this much should be noted before we pass on. In 
those bad times when men fought over the color of a coat or 
the possession of a herd of cattle, it was not the physical pain 
involved in looking at a scarlet coat with yellow trimmings 
that stirred the fighting blood, it was often not the money 
value of the disputed cattle. The true cause was the injury 
to a man's honor inflicted by the unsesthetic coat or the 
ravished cattle. That honor was at the bottom of private 
warfare is shown by the simple fact that there was no pri- 
vate warfare against merchants, peasants, pilgrims, and 
clerics, who had no honor to offend. 

The progress from private feud to the law of the king 
or commonwealth may thus be described as a steady degen- 
eration in the sensitiveness of private honor with which, in 
the higher circles of European society, the sense of honor 
is still sometimes confused. The number of causes upon 
which a man will fight varies directly with his social status, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 223 

though It is to be noted that the life-and-death combat of 
the mediaeval barons has atrophied to a few ceremonial 
flourishes of the rapier or the discharge of a pistol Into the 
air. It Is obvious that about the honor which Is appeased 
by a sword prick In the lower joint of the thumb there Is 
more sensitiveness than sense. 

There Is no monarch or parliament In the civilized world 
to-day that will refuse to go Into a treaty for the arbitration 
of differences with a foreign power provided the Issue does 
not touch the honor or the vital Interests of a nation. The 
two, of course, are In the last analysis the same thing. A 
nation's honor Is of vital interest to the nation, and on the 
other hand no nation can surrender a vital interest without 
Injury to Its honor. Shall we ask nations and governments 
to sacrifice national honor or vital Interests .? No. But we 
may draw the attention of rulers and parliaments to the 
theory of emotions popularized by William James when he 
asserts that men are afraid because they run away and men 
hate because they clench their fists and scowl. If we were 
to give up the habit of saying that a nation will fight for 
a cause involving Its honor, and said Instead that when a 
nation fights its honor Is presumably involved, we should get 
nearer to a solution of the problem. If we could only get 
a nation under a particular set of circumstances not to fight, 
it Is likely that It will ultimately find that its honor has not 
been Injured ; not always, but as a rule. In the case of the 
mediaeval baron, as the habit declined of fighting over the 
offensive color of a coat or the tilt of a hat, the sense of 
honor ceased to be mutilated by coats and hats. What the 
nations have Inherited from an evil past is still that habit 
of finding a cause for war, and therefore an Injury to one's 
honor, in the tilt of another nation's hat. Obviously the way 
to the prolongation of peace is through the elimination of 
many of the Irritants that have hitherto stirred a nation's 



224 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

honor. This may seem a craven and ignoble policy. But 
the mediaeval baron must have felt it a craven thing not to 
draw his sword when the color of his neighbor's coat of mail 
or the head feathers on his neighbor's charger offended him. 

Civilized communities have already outgrown a mass of 
smiles, sneers, jostlings, hints, words, and phrases for which 
the Dark Ages went to war, but too many of those acts, 
signs, and ceremonials in which the national honor is sup- 
posed to be imbedded unfortunately survive. Civilized 
nations still recognize a large number of actions which, if 
performed by another nation, automatically lead to war. 
There is the national flag, insult to which means either 
reparation or war. There are the lives of nationals in a 
foreign country. There is the tradition which invests every 
army lieutenant and naval ensign on foreign soil with greater 
powers of peace and war than the President of the United 
States exercises. For you can criticise and oppose a Presi- 
dent's policy even if it is foreign policy, but automatically 
the whole nation rallies behind the young subaltern who gets 
into trouble with the mob in a foreign city. There is the 
tradition which prescribes that when a nation has been com- 
mitted to an act of folly or crime by its representative, it 
may explain or mitigate or countercharge or offer repara- 
tion but it cannot in honor disavow. The peace of the world 
is founded on the proud principle that the citizen of no par- 
ticular consequence at home and the army or naval officer 
of no particular authority at home, become the depositaries 
of the nation's honor, the nation's fortunes, and the nation's 
policy when they set foot on foreign soil. 

Into this mass of rights, privileges, proprieties, and tradi- 
tions the awakened conscience of humanity has thrust the 
sterilized needle of common sense, and we are to-day witness- 
ing a process which isolates the fundamental principles of 
true national honor and really vital interests from the dead 



ILLUSTRATIONS 225 

sediment of etiquette which has hitherto been supposed to 
embody the national honor. The way to surer and larger 
peace is through the clearing away of this clutter of things 
"not arbitrable." ... 

I have tried to formulate something of a case for the man 
who is opposed to the Bernhardi ideal of war and yet does not 
wish to be driven into defending the kingdom of heaven on 
earth. It is the weakness of the ultra-pacifist from the his- 
toric point of view, that he would write finis to the book of 
international evolution. We have not done that even to 
the book of national evolution. The absolute rule of law 
does not obtain in any community. The pacifist writes at 
the end of the novel, "And they lived happy ever after- 
ward." Opposed to him is the man who regards himself as 
an uncompromising realist and says, "Oh, no, the man and 
the woman will go on quarrelling to the end of time." Be- 
tween the two there is room for the plain observer of life 
who merely predicts for his hero and heroine a steady prog- 
ress through misunderstanding and strife to a tolerable 
condition of sympathy and forbearance. 

GROUP THREE 
(To Accompany Chapter III) 

A MODERN SYMPOSIUM 1 

By G. Lowes Dickinson 

{The Speech of Ellis) 

[As Wilson] sat down a note was passed along to me from 
Ellis, asking permission to speak next. I assented willingly ; 
for Ellis, though some of us thought him frivolous, was, at 

^ Pp. 90-108. Reprinted by special permission of the author and of 
the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co. 
Q 



226 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

any rate, never dull. His sunburnt complexion, his fair 
curly hair, and the light in his blue eyes made a pleasant 
impression, as he rose and looked down upon us from his six 
feet. 

"This," he began, "is really an extraordinary discovery 
Wilson has made, that fathers have children, and children 
fathers ! One wonders how the world has got on all these 
centuries in ignorance of it. It seems so obvious, once it 
has been stated. But that, of course, is the nature of great 
truths ; as soon as they are announced they seem to have been 
always familiar. It is possible, for that very reason, that 
many people may underestimate the importance of Wilson's 
pronouncement, forgetting that it is the privilege of genius 
to formulate for the first time what every one has been 
dimly feeling. We ought not to be ungrateful; but per- 
haps it is our duty to be cautious. For great ideas natu- 
rally suggest practical applications, and it is here that I 
foresee difficulties. What Wilson's proposition in fact 
amounts to, if I understand him rightly, is that we ought to 
open as wide as possible the gates of life, and make those who 
enter as comfortable as we can. Now, I think we ought to 
be very careful about doing anything of the kind. We know, 
of course, very little about the conditions of the unborn. 
But I think it highly probable that, like labour, as described 
by the political economists, they form throughout the 
universe a single mobile body, with a tendency to gravitate 
wherever the access is freest and the conditions most fa- 
vourable. And I should be very much afraid of attracting 
what we may call, perhaps, the unemployed of the universe 
in undue proportions to this planet, by offering them ar- 
tificially better terms than are to be obtained elsewhere. 
For that, as you know, would defeat our own object. We 
should merely cause an exodus, as it were, from the outlying 
and rural districts. Mars, or the moon, or whatever the 



ILLUSTRATIONS 227 

place may be ; and the amount of distress and difficulty on 
the earth would be greater than ever. At any rate, I should 
insist, and I daresay Wilson agrees with me there, on some 
adequate test. And I would not advertise too widely what 
we are doing. After all, other planets must be responsible 
for their own unborn ; and I don't see why we should be- 
come a kind of dumping-ground of the universe for every 
one who may imagine he can better himself by migrating 
to the earth. For that reason, among others, I would not 
open the gate too wide. And, perhaps, in view of this con- 
sideration, we might still permit some people not to marry. 
At any rate, I wouldn't go further, I think, than a fine for 
recalcitrant bachelors. Wilson, I daresay, would prefer im- 
prisonment for a second offence, and in case of contumacy, 
even capital punishment. On such a point I am not, I 
confess, an altogether impartial judge, as I should certainly 
incur the greater penalty. Still, as I have said, in the gen- 
eral interests of society, and in view of the conditions of the 
universal market, I would urge caution and deliberation. 
And that is all I have to say at present on this very inter- 
esting subject. 

"The other point that interested me in Wilson's remarks 
was not, indeed, so novel as the discovery about fathers 
having children, but it was, in its way, equally important. 
I mean, the announcement made with authority that the 
human race really does, as has been so often conjectured, 
progress. We may take it now, I suppose, that that is 
established, or Wilson would not have proclaimed it. And 
we are, therefore, in a position roughly to determine in what 
progress consists. This is a task which, I believe, I am more 
competent to attempt perhaps even than Wilson himself, 
because I have had unusual opportunities of travel, and have 
endeavoured to utilize them to clear my mind of prejudices. 
I flatter myself that I can regard with perfect impartiality 



228 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

the ideals of different countries, and in particular those of 
the new world which, I presume, are to dominate the future. 
In attempting to estimate what progress means, one could 
not do better, I suppose, than describe the civilization of 
the United States. For in describing that, one will be 
describing the whole civilization of the future, seeing that 
what America is our colonies are, or will become, and what 
our colonies are we, too, may hope to attain, if we make the 
proper sacrifices to preserve the unity of the empire. Let 
us see, then, what, from an objective point of view, really 
is the future of this progressing world of ours. 

"Perhaps, however, before proceeding to analyse the spir- 
itual ideals of the American people, I had better give some 
account of their country. For environment, as we all 
know now, has an incalculable effect upon character. 
Consider, then, the American continent ! How simple it is ! 
How broad ! How large ! How grand in design ! A strip 
of coast, a range of mountains, a plain, a second range, a 
second strip of coast ! That is all ! Contrast the complexity 
of Europe, its lack of symmetry, its variety, irregularity, 
disorder, and caprice ! The geography of the two continents 
already foreshadows the differences in their civilizations. 
On the one hand simplicity and size; on the other a hole- 
and-corner variety: there immense rivers, endless forests, 
interminable plains, indefinite repetition of a few broad ideas ; 
here distracting transitions, novelties, surprises, shocks, 
distinctions in a word, already suggesting Distinction. 
Even in its physical features America is the land of quantity, 
while Europe is that of quality. And as with the land, so 
with its products. How large are the American fruits ! 
How tall the trees ! How immense the oysters ! What 
has Europe by comparison ? Mere flavor and form, mere 
beauty, delicacy, and grace ! America, one would say, is 
the latest work of the great artist — we are told, indeed, by 



ILLUSTRATIONS 229 

geologists, that it is the youngest of the continents — con- 
ceived at an age when he had begun to repeat himself, 
broad, summary, impressionist, audacious in empty space; 
whereas Europe would seem to represent his pre-Raphaelite 
period, in its wealth of detail, its variety of figure, costume, 
architecture, landscape, its crudely contrasted colours and 
minute precision of individual form. 

"And as with the countries, so with their civilizations. 
Europe is the home of class, America of democracy. By 
democracy I do not mean a mere form of government — in 
that respect, of course, America is less democratic than 
England ; I mean the mental attitude that implies and en- 
genders Indistinction. Indistinction, I say, rather than 
equality, for the word equality is misleading, and might 
seem to imply, for example, a social and economic parity 
of conditions, which no more exists in America than it does 
in Europe. Politically, as well as socially, America is a 
plutocracy; her democracy is spiritual and intellectual; 
and its essence is, the denial of all superiorities save that of 
wealth. Such superiorities, in fact, hardly exist across the 
Atlantic. All men there are intelligent, all efficient, all en- 
ergetic ; and as these are the only qualities they possess, so 
they are the only ones they feel called upon to admire. 
How diff"erent is the case with Europe ! How innumerable 
and how confusing the gradations ! For diversities of 
language and race, indeed, we may not be altogether re- 
sponsible ; but we have superadded to these, distinctions of 
manner, of feeling, of perception, of intellectual grasp and 
spiritual insight, unknown to the simpler and vaster con- 
sciousness of the West. In addition, in short, to the ob- 
vious and fundamentally natural standard of wealth, we 
have invented others impalpable and artificial in their char- 
acter ; and however rapidly these may be destined to disap- 
pear as the race progresses, and the influence of the West 



230 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

begins to dominate the East, they do, nevertheless, still per- 
sist, and give to our effete civilization the character of 
Aristocracy, that is of Caste. In all this we see, as I have 
suggested, the influence of environment. The old-world 
stock, transplanted across the ocean, imitates the char- 
acteristics of its new home. Sloughing off artificial dis- 
tinctions, it manifests itself in bold simplicity, broad as the 
plains, turbulent as the rivers, formless as the mountains, 
crude as the fruits of its adopted country. 

" Yet while thus forming themselves into the image of the 
new world, the Americans have not disdained to make use 
of such acquisitions of the Past as might be useful to them 
in the task that lay before them. They have rejected our 
ideals and our standards ; but they have borrowed our 
capital and our inventions. They have thus been able — 
a thing unknown before in the history of the world — to start 
the battle against Nature with weapons ready forged. On 
the material results they have thus been able to achieve it 
is the less necessary for me to dilate, that they keep us so 
fully informed of them themselves. But it may be inter- 
esting to note an important consequence in their spiritual 
life, which has commonly escaped the notice of observers. 
Thanks to Europe, America has never been powerless in the 
face of Nature ; therefore has never felt Fear ; therefore 
never known Reverence ; and therefore never experienced 
Religion. It may seem paradoxical to make such an asser- 
tion about the descendants of the Puritan Fathers ; nor do 
I forget the notorious fact that America is the home of the 
sects, from the followers of Joseph Smith to those of Mrs. 
Eddy. But these are the phenomena that illustrate my 
point. A nation which knew what religion was, in the 
European sense; whose roots were struck in the soil of 
spiritual conflict, of temptations and visions in haunted 
forests or desert sands by the Nile, of midnight risings, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 23 1 

scourgings of the flesh, dirges in vast cathedrals, and the 
miracle of the Host solemnly veiled in a glory of painted 
light — such a nation would never have accepted Christian 
Science as a religion. No ! Religion in America is a para- 
site without roots. The questions that have occupied Eu- 
rope from the dawn of her history, for which she has fought 
more fiercely than for empire or liberty, for which she has 
fasted in deserts, agonized in cells, suffered on the cross, and 
at the stake, for which she has sacrificed wealth, health, 
ease, intelligence, life, these questions of the meaning of the 
world, the origin and destiny of the soul, the life after death, 
the existence of God, and his relation to the universe, for 
the American people simply do not exist. They are as in- 
accessible, as impossible to them, as the Sphere to the dwellers 
in Flatland. That whole dimension is unknown to them. 
Their healthy and robust intelligence confines itself to the 
things of this world. Their religion, if they have one, is 
what I believe they call ' healthy-mindedness.' It consists 
in ignoring everything that might suggest a doubt as to the 
worth of existence, and so conceivably paralyse activity. 
*Let us eat and drink,' they say, with a hearty and robust 
good faith ; omitting as irrelevant and morbid the discour- 
aging appendix, *for to-morrow we die.' Indeed ! What has 
death to do with buildings twenty-four stories high, with the 
fastest trains, the noisiest cities, the busiest crowds in the 
world, and generally the largest, the finest, the most accel- 
erated of everything that exists ^ America has sloughed off 
religion ; and as, in the history of Europe, religion has under- 
lain every other activity, she has sloughed off, along with it, 
the whole European system of spiritual life. Literature, 
for instance, and Art, do not exist across the Atlantic. I 
am aware, of course, that Americans write books and paint 
pictures. But their books are not Literature, nor their 
pictures Art, except in so far as they represent a faint adum- 



232 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

bration of the European tradition. The true spirit of 
America has no use for such activities. And even if, as must 
occasionally happen in a population of eighty millions, there 
is born among them a man of artistic instincts, he is im- 
mediately and inevitably repelled to Europe, whence he de- 
rives his training and his inspiration, and where alone he 
can live, observe and create. That this must be so from the 
nature of the case is obvious when we reflect that the spirit 
of Art is disinterested contemplation, while that of America 
is cupidous acquisition. Americans, I am aware, believe 
that they will produce Literature and Art, as they produce 
coal and steel and oil, by the judicious application of intel- 
ligence and capital; but here they do themselves injustice. 
The qualities that are making them masters of the world, 
unfit them for slighter and less serious pursuits. The Future is 
for them, the kingdom of elevators, of telephones, of motor- 
cars, of flying-machines. Let them not idly hark back, 
misled by effete traditions, to the old European dream of 
the kingdom of heaven. ^ Excudent alii^ let them say, *for 
Europe, Letters and Art; tu regere argento populos, Mor- 
gane, memento, let America rule the world by Syndicates 
and Trusts!' For such is her true destiny; and that she 
conceives it to be such, is evidenced by the determination 
with which she has suppressed all irrelevant activities. 
Every kind of disinterested intellectual operation she has 
severely repudiated. In Europe we take delight in the op- 
erations of the mind as such, we let it play about a subject, 
merely for the fun of the thing ; we approve knowledge for 
its own sake ; we appreciate irony and wit. But all this is 
unknown in America. The most intelligent people in the 
world, they severely limit their intelligence to the adaptation 
of means to ends. About the ends themselves they never 
permit themselves to speculate ; and for this reason, though 
they calculate, they never think, though they invent, they 



ILLUSTRATIONS 233 

never discover, and though they talk, they never converse. 
For thought implies speculation; reflection, discovery; 
conversation, leisure ; and all alike imply a disinterestedness 
which has no place in the American system. For the same 
reason they do not play ; they have converted games into 
battles ; and battles in which every weapon is legitimate so 
long as it is victorious. An American foot-ball match ex- 
hibits in a type the American spirit, short, sharp, scientific, 
intense, no loitering by the road, no enjoyment of the process, 
no favour, no quarter, but a fight to the death with victory 
as the end, and anything and everything as the means. 

" A nation so severely practical could hardly be expected 
to attach the same importance to the emotions as has been 
attributed to them by Europeans. Feeling, like Intellect, 
is not regarded, in the West, as an end in itself. And it is 
not uninteresting to note that the Americans are the only 
great nation that have not produced a single lyric of love 
worth recording. Physically^ as well as spiritually, they are 
a people of cold temperament. Their women, so much 
and, I do not doubt, so legitimately admired, are as hard as 
they are brilliant ; their glitter is the glitter of ice. Thus 
happily constituted, Americans are able to avoid the im- 
mense waste of time and energy involved in the formation 
and maintenance of subtle personal relations. They marry, 
of course, they produce children, they propagate the race; 
but I would venture to say, they do not love, as Europeans 
have loved ; they do not exploit the emotion, analyse and 
enjoy it, still less express it in manners, in gesture, in epi- 
gram, in verse. And hence the kind of shudder produced in 
a cultivated European by the treatment of emotion in Amer- 
ican fiction. The authors are trying to express something 
they have never experienced, and to graft the European 
tradition on to a civilization which has none of the elements 
necessary to nourish and support it. 



234 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

"From this brief analysis of the attitude of Americans 
towards life, the point with which I started will, I hope, have 
become clear, that it is idle to apply to them any of the 
tests which we apply to a European civilization. For they 
have rejected, whether they know it or not, our whole 
scheme of values. What, then, is their own .? What do 
they recognize as an end f This is an interesting point on 
which I have reflected much in the course of my travels. 
Sometimes I have thought it was wealth, sometimes power, 
sometimes activity. But a poem, or at least a production 
in metre, which I came across in the States, gave me a new 
idea upon the subject. On such a point I speak with great 
diffidence ; but I am inclined to think that my author was 
right; that the real end which Americans set before them- 
selves is Acceleration. To be always moving, and always 
moving faster, that they think is the beatific life; and 
with their happy detachment from philosophy and specula- 
tion, they are not troubled by the question. Whither? 
If they are asked by Europeans, as they sometimes are, what 
is the point of going so fast ? their only feeling is one of gen- 
uine astonishment. Why, they reply, you go fast! And 
what more can be said ^ Hence, their contempt for the leisure 
so much valued by Europeans. Leisure they feel to be a 
kind of standing still, the unpardonable sin. Hence, also, 
their aversion to play, to conversation, to everything that is 
not work. I once asked an American who had been describ- 
ing to me the scheme of his laborious life, where it was that 
the fun came in .? He replied, without hesitation and without 
regret, that it came in nowhere. How should it f It could 
only act as a brake ; and a brake upon Acceleration is the 
last thing tolerable to the American genius. 

"The American genius, I say: but after all, and this is 
the real point of my remarks, what America is Europe is 
becoming. We, who sit here, with the exception, of course, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 235 

of Wilson, represent the Past, not the Future. Politicians, 
professors, lawyers, doctors, no matter what our calling, our 
judgments are determined by the old scale of values. In- 
tellect, Beauty, Emotion, these are the things we count 
precious ; to wealth and to progress we are indifferent, save 
as conducing to these. And thus, like the speakers who pre- 
ceded me, we venture to criticise and doubt, where the mod- 
ern man, American or European, simply and whole-heartedly, 
accepts. For this it would be idle for us to blame ourselves, 
idle even to regret; we should simply and objectively note 
that we are out of court. All that we say may be true, but 
it is irrelevant. *True,' says the man of the Future, *we 
have no religion, literature, or art; we don't know whence 
we come, nor whither we go ; but, what is more important, 
we don't care. What we do know is, that we are moving 
faster than any one ever moved before; and that there is 
every chance of our moving faster and faster. To inquire 
"whither" is the one thing that we recognize as blasphemous. 
The principle of the Universe is Acceleration, and we are 
its exponents ; what is not accelerated will be extinguished ; 
and if we cannot answer ultimate questions, that is the less 
to be regretted in that, a few centuries hence, there will be 
nobody left to ask them.' 

"Such is the attitude which I believe to be that of the 
Future, both in the West and in the East. I do not pre- 
tend to sympathize with it ; but my perception of it gives 
a peculiar piquancy to my own position. I rejoice that I 
was born at the end of an epoch ; that I stand as it were at the 
summit, just before the plunge into the valley below; and 
looking back, survey and summarize in a glance the ages 
that are past. I rejoice that my friends are Socrates and 
Plato, Dante, Michelangelo, Goethe instead of Mr. Carnegie 
and Mr. Pierpont Morgan. I rejoice that I belong to an 
effete country; and that I sit at table with almost the last 



236 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

representatives of the culture, the learning and the ideals 
of centuries of civilization. I prefer the tradition of the 
Past to that of the Future ; I value it the more for its con- 
trast with that which is to come; and I am the more at 
ease inasmuch as I feel myself divested of all responsibility 
towards generations whose ideals and standards I am unable 
to appreciate. 

"All this shows, of course, merely that I am not one of 
the people so aptly described by Wilson as the *new gen- 
eration.' But I flatter myself that my intellectual appre- 
hension is not coloured by the circumstances of my own case, 
and that I have given you a clear and objective picture of 
what it is that really constitutes progress. And with that 
proud consciousness in my mind, I resume my seat." 

PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK ^ 

By Jerome K. Jerome 

The neighborhood of Bloomsbury Square towards four 
o'clock of a November afternoon is not so crowded as to 
secure to the stranger, of appearance anything out of the 
common, immunity from observation. Tibb's boy, scream- 
ing at the top of his voice that she was his honey, stopped 
suddenly, stepped backwards on to the toes of a voluble 
young lady wheeling a perambulator, and remained deaf, 
apparently, to the somewhat personal remarks of the voluble 
young lady. Not until he had reached the next corner — 
and then more as a soliloquy than as information to the 
street — did Tibb's boy recover sufficient interest in his own 
affairs to remark that he was her bee. The voluble young 
lady herself, following some half-a-dozen yards behind, for- 
got her wrongs in contemplation of the stranger's back. 

* Reprinted by special permission of the author and of the publishers, 
Dodd, Mead, & Co. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 237 

There was this that was peculiar about the stranger's back : 
that instead of being flat it presented a decided curve. 
"It ain't a 'ump, and it don't look like kervitcher of the 
spine," observed the voluble young lady to herself. "Blimy 
if I don't believe 'e's taking 'ome 'is washing up his back." 

The constable at the corner, trying to seem busy doing 
nothing, noticed the stranger's approach with gathering in- 
terest. "That's an odd sort of a walk of yours, young man," 
thought the constable. "You take care you don't fall down 
and tumble over yourself." 

"Thought he was a young man," murmured the constable, 
the stranger having passed him. "He had a young face 
right enough." 

The daylight was fading. The stranger, finding it impos- 
sible to read the name of the street upon the corner house, 
turned back. 

"Why, 'tis a young man," the constable told himself; 
"a mere boy." 

"I beg your pardon," said the stranger; "but would you 
mind telling me my way to Bloomsbury Square." 

"This is Bloomsbury Square," explained the constable; 
"leastways round the corner is. What number might you 
be wanting.?" 

The stranger took from the ticket pocket of his tightly 
buttoned overcoat a piece of paper, unfolded it and read it 
out: "Mrs. Pennycherry. Number Forty-eight." 

"Round to the left," instructed him the constable ; "fourth 
house. Been recommended there ? " 

"By — by a friend," replied the stranger. "Thank you 
very much." 

"Ah," muttered the constable to himself; "guess you 
won't be calling him that by the end of the week, young 

"Funny," added the constable, gazing after the retreating 
figure of the stranger. "Seen plenty of the other sex as 



238 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

looked young behind and old in front. This cove looks 
young in front and old behind. Guess he'll look old all round 
if he stops long at mother Pennycherry's : stingy old cat." 

Constables whose beat included Bloomsbury Square had 
their reasons for not liking Mrs. Pennycherry. Indeed it 
might have been difficult to discover any human being with 
reasons for liking that sharp-featured lady. Maybe the 
keeping of second-rate boarding houses in the neighbour- 
hood of Bloomsbury does not tend to develop the virtues of 
generosity and amiability. 

Meanwhile the stranger, proceeding upon' his way, had 
rung the bell of Number Forty-eight. Mrs. Pennycherry, 
peeping from the area and catching a glimpse, above the 
railings, of a handsome if somewhat effeminate masculine 
face, hastened to readjust her widow's cap before the look- 
ing glass while directing Mary Jane to show the stranger, 
should he prove a problematical boarder, into the dining- 
room, and to light the gas. 

"And don't stop gossiping, and don't you take it upon 
yourself to answer questions. Say I'll be up in a minute," 
were Mrs. Pennycherry's further instructions, "and mind 
you hide your hands as much as you can." 

"What are you grinning at.^" demanded Mrs. Penny- 
cherry, a couple of minutes later, of the dingy Mary Jane. 

"Wasn't grinning," explained the meek Mary Jane, 
"was only smiling to myself." 

"What at?" 

"Dunno," admitted Mary Jane. But still she went on 
smiling. 

"What's he like then.?" demanded Mrs. Pennycherry. 

"'E ain't the usual sort," was Mary Jane's opinion. 

"Thank God for that," ejaculated Mrs. Pennycherry 
piously. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 239 

"Says 'e's been recommended, by a friend." 

"By whom?" 

"By a friend. 'E didn't say no name." 

Mrs. Pennycherry pondered. "He's not the funny sort, 
is he.?" 

Not that sort at all. Mary Jane was sure of it. 

Mrs. Pennycherry ascended the stairs still pondering. 
As she entered the room the stranger rose and bowed. Noth- 
ing could have been simpler than the stranger's bow, yet 
there came with it to Mrs. Pennycherry a rush of old sen- 
sations long forgotten. For one brief moment Mrs. Penny- 
cherry saw herself an amiable well-bred lady, widow of a 
solicitor : a visitor had called to see her. It was but a mo- 
mentary fancy. The next instant Reality reasserted itself. 
Mrs. Pennycherry, a lodging-house keeper, existing pre- 
cariously upon a daily round of petty meannesses, was pre- 
pared for contest with a possible new boarder, who fortu- 
nately looked an inexperienced young gentleman. 

"Someone has recommended me to you," began Mrs. 
Pennycherry; "may I ask who.?" 

But the stranger waved the question aside as immaterial. 

"You might not remember — him," he smiled. "He 
thought that I should do well to pass the few months I am 
given — that I have to be in London, here. You can take 
me in .?" 

Mrs. Pennycherry thought that she would be able to 
take the stranger in. 

"A room to sleep in," explained the stranger, " — any 
room will do — with food and drink sufficient for a man, 
is all that I require." 

"For breakfast," began Mrs. Pennycherry, "I always 
give " 

"What is right and proper, I am convinced," inter- 
rupted the stranger. "Pray do not trouble to go into 



240 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

detail, Mrs. Pennycherry. With whatever it is I shall be 
content." 

Mrs. Pennycherry, puzzled, shot a quick glance at the 
stranger, but his face, though the gentle eyes were smiling, 
was frank and serious. 

"At all events you will see the room," suggested Mrs. 
Pennycherry, "before we discuss terms." 

"Certainly," agreed the stranger. "I am a little tired 
and shall be glad to rest there." 

Mrs. Pennycherry led the way upward ; on the landing 
of the third floor, paused a moment undecided, then opened 
the door of the back bedroom. 

"It is very comfortable," commented the stranger. 
"For this room," stated Mrs. Pennycherry, "together 
with full board, consisting of " 

"Of everything needful. It goes without saying," again 
interrupted the stranger with his quiet grave smile. 

"I have generally asked," continued Mrs. Pennycherry, 
"four pounds a week. To you — " Mrs. Pennycherry's 
voice, unknown to her, took to itself the note of aggressive 
generosity — "seeing you have been recommended here, 
say three pounds ten." 

"Dear lady," said the stranger, "that is kind of you. 
As you have divined, I am not a rich man. If it be not 
imposing upon you I accept your reduction with gratitude." 

Again Mrs. Pennycherry, familiar with the satirical 
method, shot a suspicious glance upon the stranger, but not 
a line was there, upon that smooth fair face, to which a 
sneer could for a moment have clung. Clearly he was as 
simple as he looked. 

"Gas, of course, extra." 

"Of course," agreed the stranger. 

"Coals " 

"We shall not quarrel," for a third time the stranger in- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 241 

terrupted. "You have been very considerate to me as it 
is. I feel, Mrs. Pennycherry, I can leave myself entirely 
in your hands.'* 

The stranger appeared anxious to be alone. Mrs. Penny- 
cherry, having put a match to the stranger's fire, turned to 
depart. And at this point it was that Mrs. Pennycherry, 
the holder hitherto of an unbroken record for sanity, be- 
haved in a manner she herself, five minutes earlier in her 
career, would have deemed impossible — that no living soul 
who had ever known her would have believed, even had 
Mrs. Pennycherry gone down upon her knees and sworn it 
to them. 

"Did I say three pound ten.^" demanded Mrs. Penny- 
cherry of the stranger, her hand upon the door. She spoke 
crossly. She was feeling cross, with the stranger, with her- 
self — particularly with herself. 

"You were kind enough to reduce it to that amount," 
replied the stranger; "but if upon reflection you find your- 
self unable " 

"I was making a mistake," said Mrs. Pennycherry, "it 
should have been two pound ten." 

"I cannot — I will not accept such sacrifice," exclaimed 
the stranger; "the three pound ten I can well afford." 

"Two pound ten are my terms," snapped Mrs. Penny- 
cherry. " If you are bent on paying more, you can go else- 
where. You'll find plenty to oblige you." 

Her vehemence must have impressed the stranger. "We 
will not contend further," he smiled. "I was merely afraid 
that in the goodness of your heart " 

"Oh, it isn't as good as all that," growled Mrs. Penny- 
cherry. 

"I am not so sure," returned the stranger. "I am some- 
what suspicious of you. But wilful woman must, I suppose, 
have her way." 

R 



242 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

The stranger held out his hand, and to Mrs. Pennycherry, 
at that moment, it seemed the most natural thing in the 
world to take it as if it had been the hand of an old friend 
and to end the interview with a pleasant laugh — though 
laughing was an exercise not often indulged in by Mrs. 
Pennycherry. 

Mary Jane was standing by the window, her hands folded 
in front of her, when Mrs. Pennycherry reentered the 
kitchen. By standing close to the window one caught a 
glimpse of the trees in Bloomsbury Square and through 
their bare branches of the sky beyond. 

"There's nothing much to do for the next half hour, till 
Cook comes back. I'll see to the door if you'd like a run 
out.^" suggested Mrs. Pennycherry. 

"It would be nice," agreed the girl so soon as she had 
recovered power of speech; "it's just the time of day I 
like." 

"Don't be longer than the half hour," added Mrs. Penny- 
cherry. 

Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, assembled after dinner 
in the drawing-room, discussed the stranger with that 
freedom and frankness characteristic of Forty-eight Blooms- 
bury Square, towards the absent. 

"Not what I call a smart young man," was the opinion 
of Augustus Longcord, who was something in the City. 

"Thpeaking for myth elf," commented his partner Isidore, 
"hav'n'th any uthe for the thmart young man. Too many 
of him, ath it ith." 

"Must be pretty smart if he's one too many for you," 
laughed his partner. There was this to be said for the 
repartee of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square : it was simple 
of construction and easy of comprehension. 

"Well it made me feel good just looking at him," declared 
Miss Kite, the highly coloured. "It was his clothes, I sup- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 243 

pose — made me think of Noah and the ark — all that 
sort of thing." 

"It would be clothes that would make you think — if 
anything," drawled the languid Miss Devine. She was a 
tall, handsome girl, engaged at the moment in futile efforts 
to recline with elegance and comfort combined upon a 
horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured 
the only easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that 
Miss Devine's remark received from the rest of the com- 
pany more approbation than perhaps it merited. 

"Is that intended to be clever, dear, or only rude?" 
Miss Kite requested to be informed. 

"Both," claimed Miss Devine. 

"Myself, I must confess," shouted the tall young lady's 
father, commonly called the Colonel, " I found him a 
fool." 

"I noticed you seemed to be getting on very well to- 
gether," purred his wife, a plump, smiling little lady. 

"Possibly we were," retorted the Colonel. "Fate has 
accustomed me to the society of fools." 

"Isn't it a pity to start quarrelling immediately after 
dinner, you two," suggested their thoughtful daughter 
from the sofa, "you'll have nothing left to amuse you for 
the rest of the evening." 

"He didn't strike me as a conversationalist," said the lady 
who was cousin to a baronet; "but he did pass the vegetables 
before he helped himself. A little thing like that shows 
breeding." 

"Or that he didn't know you and thought maybe you'd 
leave him half a spoonful," laughed Augustus the wit. 

"What I can't make out about him " shouted the 

Colonel. 

The stranger entered the room. 

The Colonel, securing the evening paper, retired into a 



244 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

corner. The highly coloured Kite, reaching down from the 
mantelpiece a paper fan, held it coyly before her face. Miss 
Devine sat upright on the horsehair sofa, and rearranged 
her skirts. 

"Know anything.?" demanded Augustus of the stranger, 
breaking the somewhat remarkable silence. 

The stranger evidently did not understand. It was neces- 
sary for Augustus, the witty, to advance further into that 
odd silence. 

"What's going to pull off the Lincoln handicap f Tell 
me, and I'll go out straight and put my shirt upon it." 

"I think you would act unwisely," smiled the stranger; 
"I am not an authority upon the subject." 

"Not! Why they told me you were Captain Spy of the 
Sporting Life — in disguise." 

It would have been difficult for a joke to fall more flat. 
Nobody laughed, though why Mr. Augustus Longcord 
could not understand, and maybe none of his audience 
could have told him, for at Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square 
Mr. Augustus Longcord passed as a humorist. The stranger 
himself appeared unaware that he was being made fun of. 

"You have been misinformed," assured him the stranger. 

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Augustus Longcord. 

"It is nothing," replied the stranger in his sweet low 
voice, and passed on. 

"Well what about this theatre," demanded Mr. Longcord 
of his friend and partner ; " do you want to go or don't you ? " 
Mr. Longcord was feeling irritable. 

"Goth the ticketh — may ath well," thought Isidore. 

"Damn stupid piece, I'm told." 

"Motht of them thupid, more or leth. Pity to wathte 
the ticketh," argued Isidore, and the pair went out. 

"Are you staying long in London.?" asked Miss Kite, 
raising her practised eyes towards the stranger. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 245 

"Not long," answered the stranger. "At least, I do not 
know. It depends." 

An unusual quiet had invaded the drawing-room of Forty- 
eight Bloomsbury Square, generally noisy with strident voices 
about this hour. The Colonel remained engrossed in his 
paper. Mrs. Devine sat with her plump white hands folded 
on her lap, whether asleep or not it was impossible to say. 

The lady who ;was cousin to a baronet had shifted her chair 
beneath the gasolier, her eyes bent on her everlasting crochet 
work. The languid Miss Devine had crossed to the piano, 
where she sat fingering softly the tuneless keys, her back to 
the cold barely-furnished room. 

"Sit down," commanded saucily Miss Kite, indicating 
with her fan the vacant seat beside her. "Tell me about 
yourself. You interest me." Miss Kite adopted a pretty 
authoritative air towards all youthful-looking members of 
the opposite sex. It harmonised with the peach complexion 
and the golden hair, and fitted her about as well. 

"I am glad of that," answered the stranger, taking the 
chair suggested. "I so wish to interest you." 

"You're a very bold boy." Miss Kite lowered her fan, 
for the purpose of glancing archly over the edge of it, 
and for the first time encountered the eyes of the stranger 
looking into hers. And then it was that Miss Kite experi- 
enced precisely the same curious sensation that an hour or 
so ago had troubled Mrs. Pennycherry when the stranger 
had first bowed to her. It seemed to Miss Kite that she 
was no longer the Miss Kite that, had she risen and looked 
into it, the fly-blown mirror over the marble mantelpiece 
would, she knew, have presented to her view; but quite 
another Miss Kite — a cheerful, bright-eyed lady verging 
on middle age, yet still good-looking in spite of her faded 
complexion and somewhat thin brown locks. Miss Kite felt 
a pang of jealousy shoot through her; this middle-aged 



246 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Miss Kite seemed, on the whole, a more attractive lady. 
There was a wholesomeness, a broadmindedness about her 
that instinctively drew one towards her. Not hampered, 
as Miss Kite herself was, by the necessity of appearing to be 
somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two, this other 
Miss Kite could talk sensibly, even brilliantly : one felt it. 
A thoroughly "nice" woman this other Miss Kite; the real 
Miss Kite, though envious, was bound to admit it. Miss 
Kite wished to goodness she had never seen the woman. 
The glimpse of her had rendered Miss Kite dissatisfied with 
herself. 

"I am not a boy," explained the stranger; "and I had no 
intention of being bold." 

"I know," replied Miss Kite. "It was a silly remark. 
Whatever induced me to make it, I can't think. Getting 
foolish in my old age, I suppose." 

The stranger laughed. "Surely you are not old." 

"I'm thirty-nine," snapped out Miss Kite. "You don't 
call it young.?" 

"I think it a beautiful age," insisted the stranger; "young 
enough not to have lost the joy of youth, old enough to have 
learnt sympathy." 

"Oh, I daresay," returned Miss Kite, "any age you'd 
think beautiful. Vm going to bed." Miss Kite rose. The 
paper fan had somehow got itself broken. She threw the 
fragments into the fire. 

"It is early yet," pleaded the stranger, "I was looking 
forward to a talk with you." 

"Well, you'll be able to look forward to it," retorted Miss 
Kite. "Good-night." 

The truth was. Miss Kite was impatient to have a look at 
herself in the glass, in her own room with the door shut. 
The vision of that other Miss Kite — the clean-looking 
lady of the pale face and the brown hair had been so vivid, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 247 

Miss Kite wondered whether temporary forgetfulness might 
not have fallen upon her while dressing for dinner that 
evening. 

The stranger, left to his own devices, strolled towards 
the loo table, seeking something to read. 

"You seem to have frightened away Miss Kite," remarked 
the lady who was cousin to a baronet. 

"It seems so," admitted the stranger. 

"My cousin. Sir William Bosster," observed the cro- 
cheting lady, "who married old Lord Egham's niece — you 
never met the Eghams ? " 

"Hitherto," replied the stranger, "I have not had that 
pleasure." 

"A charming family. Cannot understand — my cousin 
Sir William, I mean, cannot understand my remaining here. 
*My dear Emily' — he says the same thing every time he 
sees me: 'My dear Emily, how can you exist among the 
sort of people one meets with in a boarding-house.' But 
they amuse me." 

A sense of humour, agreed the stranger, was always of 
advantage. 

"Our family on my mother's side," continued Sir Wil- 
liam's cousin in her placid monotone, "was connected with 

the Tatton-Joneses, who when King George the Fourth " 

Sir William's cousin, needing another reel of cotton, glanced 
up, and met the stranger's gaze. 

"I'm sure I don't know why I'm telling you all this," 
said Sir William's cousin in an irritable tone. "It can't 
possibly interest you." 

"Everything connected with you interests me," gravely 
the stranger assured her. 

"It is very kind of you to say so," sighed Sir William's 
cousin, but without conviction; "I am afraid sometimes 
I bore people." 



248 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

The polite stranger refrained from contradiction. 

"You see," continued the poor lady, "I really am of good 
family." 

"Dear lady," said the stranger, "your gentle face, your 
gentle voice, your gentle bearing, all proclaim it." 

She looked without flinching into the stranger's eyes, and 
gradually a smile banished the reigning dulness of her features. 

"How foolish of me." She spoke rather to herself than 
to the stranger. "Why, of course, people — people whose 
opinion is worth troubling about — judge of you by what you 
are, not by what you go about saying you are." 

The stranger remained silent. 

"I am the widow of a provincial doctor, with an income 
of just two hundred and thirty pounds per annum," she 
argued. "The sensible thing for me to do is to make the 
best of it, and to worry myself about these high and mighty 
relations of mine as little as they have ever worried them- 
selves about me." 

The stranger appeared unable to think of anything worth 
saying. 

"I have other connections," remembered Sir William's 
cousin; "those of my poor husband, to whom instead of 
being the *poor relation' I could be the fairy god-mama. 
They are my people — or would be," added Sir William's 
cousin tartly, "if I wasn't a vulgar snob." 

She flushed the instant she had said the words and, rising, 
commenced preparations for a hurried departure. 

"Now it seems I am driving you away," sighed the 
stranger. 

"Having been called a * vulgar snob,'" retorted the lady 
with some heat, "I think it about time I went." 

"The words were your own," the stranger reminded her. 

"Whatever I may have thought," remarked the indig- 
nant dame, "no lady — least of all in the presence of a total 



ILLUSTRATIONS 249 

stranger — would have called herself " The poor dame 

paused, bewildered. "There is something very curious the 
matter with me this evening, that I cannot understand," 
she explained, "I seem quite unable to avoid insulting 
myself." 

Still surrounded by bewilderment, she wished the stranger 
good night, hoping that when next they met she would be 
more herself. The stranger, hoping so also, opened the door 
and closed it again behind her. 

"Tell me," laughed Miss Devine, who by sheer force of 
talent was contriving to wring harmony from the reluctant 
piano, "how did you manage to do it? I should like to 
know." 

"How did I do what.^" inquired the stranger. 

"Contrive to get rid so quickly of those two old frumps ?" 

"How well you play!" observed the stranger. "I knew 
you had genius for music the moment I saw you." 

"How could you tell.?" 

"It is written so clearly in your face." 

The girl laughed, well pleased. "You seem to have lost 
no time in studying my face." 

"It is a beautiful and interesting face," observed the 
stranger. 

She swung round sharply on the stool and their eyes met. 
"You can read faces.?" 

"Yes." 

"Tell me, what else do you read in mine ?" 

"Frankness, courage " 

"Ah, yes, all the virtues. Perhaps. We will take them 
for granted." It was odd how serious the girl had suddenly 
become. "Tell me the reverse side." 

"I see no reverse side," replied the stranger. "I see but 
a fair girl, bursting into noble womanhood." 

"And nothing else ? You read no trace of greed, of vanity, 



250 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

of sordldness, of " An angry laugh escaped her lips. 

"And you are a reader of faces !'* 

"A reader of faces." The stranger smiled. "Do you 
know what is written upon yours at this very moment } A 
love of truth that is almost fierce, scorn of lies, scorn of 
hypocrisy, the desire for all things pure, contempt of all 
things that are contemptible — especially of such things 
as are contemptible in woman. Tell me, do I not read 
aright .? " 

I wonder, thought the girl, is that why those two others 
both hurried from the room .? Does everyone feel ashamed 
of the littleness that is in them when looked at by those clear, 
believing eyes of yours } 

The idea occurred to her: "Papa seemed to have a good 
deal to say to you during dinner. Tell me, what were you 
talking about.?" 

"The military looking gentleman upon my left.? We 
talked about your mother principally." 

"I am sorry," returned the girl, wishful now she had not 
asked the question. "I was hoping he might have chosen 
another topic for the first evening!" 

"He did try one or two," admitted the stranger; "but 
I have been about the world so little, I was glad when he 
talked to me about himself. I feel we shall be friends. He 
spoke so nicely, too, about Mrs. Devine." 

"Indeed," commented the girl. 

"He told me he had been married for twenty years and 
had never regretted it but once !" 

Her black eyes flashed upon him, but meeting his, the 
suspicion died from them. She turned aside to hide her 
smile. 

"So he regretted it — once." 

"Only once," explained the stranger, "a passing irritable 
mood. It was so frank of him to admit it. He told me — 



ILLUSTRATIONS 25 1 

I think he has taken a liking to me. Indeed he hinted as 
much. He said he did not often get an opportunity of talk- 
ing to a man like myself — he told me that he and your 
mother, when they travel together, are always mistaken for 
a honeymoon couple. Some of the experiences he related 
to me were really quite amusing." The stranger laughed 
at recollection of them — "that even here, in this place, 
they are generally referred to as * Darby and Joan.'" 

"Yes," said the girl, "that is true. Mr. Longcord gave 
them that name, the second evening after our arrival. It 
was considered clever — but rather obvious I thought my- 
self." 

"Nothing — so it seems to me," said the stranger, "is 
more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms 
of life. The sweet, tender blossom that flowers in the heart 
of the young — in hearts such as yours — that, too. Is beau- 
tiful. The love of the young for the young, that is the 
beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that 
is the beginning of — of things longer." 

"You seem to find all things beautiful," the girl grumbled. 

"But are not all things beautiful ?" demanded the stranger. 

The Colonel had finished his paper. "You two are 
engaged In a very absorbing conversation," observed the 
Colonel, approaching them. 

"We were discussing Darbies and Joans," explained his 
daughter. "How beautiful is the love that has weathered 
the storms of life !" 

"Ah!" smiled the Colonel, "that Is hardly fair. My 
friend has been repeating to cynical youth the confessions 
of an amorous husband's affection for his middle-aged and 

somewhat " The Colonel in playful mood laid his 

hand upon the stranger's shoulder, an action that neces- 
sitated his looking straight into the stranger's eyes. The 
Colonel drew himself up stiffly and turned scarlet. 



252 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Somebody was calling the Colonel a cad. Not only that, 
but was explaining quite clearly, so that the Colonel could 
see it for himself, why he was a cad. 

"That you and your wife lead a cat and dog existence is 
a disgrace to both of you. At least you might have the 
decency to try and hide it from the world — not make a 
jest of your shame to every passing stranger. You are a 
cad, sir, a cad !" 

Who was daring to say these things ? Not the stranger, 
his lips had not moved. Besides, it was not his voice. In- 
deed it sounded much more like the voice of the Colonel 
himself. The Colonel looked from the stranger to his 
daughter, from his daughter back to the stranger. Clearly 
they had not heard the voice — a mere hallucination. The 
Colonel breathed again. 

Yet the impression remaining was not to be shaken 
off. Undoubtedly it was bad taste to have joked to the 
stranger upon such a subject. No gentleman would have 
done so. 

But then no gentleman would have permitted such a jest 
to be possible. No gentleman would be forever wrangling 
with his wife — certainly never in public. However irri- 
tating the woman, a gentleman would have exercised self- 
control. 

Mrs. Devine had risen, was coming slowly across the 
room. Fear laid hold of the Colonel. She was going to 
address some aggravating remark to him — he could see it 
in her eye — which would irritate him into savage retort. 
Even this prize idiot of a stranger would understand why 
boarding-house wits had dubbed them "Darby and Joan," 
would grasp the fact that the gallant Colonel had thought 
it amusing, in conversation with a table acquaintance, to 
hold his own wife up to ridicule. 

"My dear," cried the Colonel, hurrying to speak first, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 253 

"does not this room strike you as cold ? Let me fetch you 
a shawl." 

It was useless : the Colonel felt it. It had been too long 
the custom of both of them to preface with politeness their 
deadliest insults to each other. She came on, thinking of 
a suitable reply : suitable from her point of view, that is. 
In another moment the truth would be out. A wild, fan- 
tastic possibility flashed through the Colonel's brain : If to 
him, why not to her ? 

"Letitia," cried the Colonel, and the tone of his voice 
surprised her into silence, "I want you to look closely at 
our friend. Does he not remind you of someone.'*" 

Mrs. Devine, so urged, looked at the stranger long and 
hard. "Yes," she murmured, turning to her husband, "he 
does, who is it ^ " 

"I cannot fix it," replied the Colonel; "I thought that 
maybe you would remember." 

"It will come to me," mused Mrs. Devine. "It is some 
one — years ago, when I was a girl — in Devonshire. 
Thank you, if it isn't troubling you, Harry. I left it in the 
dining-room." 

It was, as Mr. Augustus Longcord explained to his part- 
ner Isidore, the colossal foolishness of the stranger that was 
the cause of all the trouble. "Give me a man, who can 
take care of himself — or thinks he can," declared Augustus 
Longcord, "and I am prepared to give a good account of 
myself. But when a helpless baby refuses even to look at 
what you call your figures, tells you that your mere word 
is sufficient for him, and hands you over his cheque-book to 
fill up for yourself — well, it isn't playing the game." 

"Auguthuth," was the curt comment of his partner, 
"you're a fool." 

"All right, my boy, you try," suggested Augustus. 

"Jutht what I mean to do," asserted his partner. 



254 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

"Well," demanded Augustus one evening later, meeting 
Isidore ascending the stairs after a long talk with the stranger 
in the dining-room with the door shut. 

"Oh, don't arth me," retorted Isidore, "thilly ath, thath 
what he ith." 

"What did he say?" 

"What did he thay! talked about the Jewth : what a 
grand rathe they were — how people mithjudged them : 
all that thort of rot. 

"Thaid thome of the motht honorable men he had ever 
met had been Jewth. Thought I wath one of 'em !" 

"Well, did you get anything out of him.^" 

"Get anything out of him. Of courthe not. Couldn't 
very well thell the whole rathe, ath it were, for a couple of 
hundred poundth, after that. Didn't theem worth it." 

There were many things Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square 
came gradually to the conclusion were not worth the doing : 
— Snatching at the gravy ; pouncing out of one's turn upon 
the vegetables and helping oneself to more than one's fair 
share; manoeuvring for the easy-chair; sitting on the 
evening paper while pretending not to have seen it — all 
such-like tiresome bits of business. For the little one made 
out of it, really it was not worth the bother. Grumbling 
everlastingly at one's food ; grumbling everlastingly at most 
things; abusing Pennycherry behind her back; abusing, 
for a change, one's fellow-boarders ; squabbling with one's 
fellow-boarders about nothing in particular; sneering at 
one's fellow-boarders; talking scandal of one's fellow- 
boarders ; making senseless jokes about one's fellow-board- 
ers ; talking big about oneself, nobody believing one — all 
such-like vulgarities. Other boarding-houses might indulge 
in them : Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square had its dignity 
to consider. 

The truth is, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming 



ILLUSTRATIONS 255 

to a very good opinion of itself : for the which not Blooms- 
bury Square so much as the stranger must be blamed. The 
stranger had arrived at Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square 
with the preconceived idea — where obtained from Heaven 
knows — that its seemingly commonplace, mean-minded, 
coarse-fibred occupants were in reality ladies and gentlemen 
of the first water; and time and observation had appar- 
ently only strengthened this absurd idea. The natural 
result was, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming 
round to the stranger's opinion of itself. 

Mrs. Pennycherry, the stranger would persist in regarding 
as a lady born and bred, compelled by circumstances over 
which she had no control to fill an arduous but honorable 
position of middle-class society — a sort of foster-mother, 
to whom were due the thanks and gratitude of her pro- 
miscuous family ; and this view of herself Mrs. Pennycherry 
now clung to with obstinate conviction. There were dis- 
advantages attaching, but these Mrs. Pennycherry appeared 
prepared to suffer cheerfully. A lady born and bred cannot 
charge other ladies and gentlemen for coals and candles 
they have never burnt; a foster-mother cannot palm off 
upon her children New Zealand mutton for Southdown. 
A mere lodging-house-keeper can play these tricks, and 
pocket the profits. But a lady feels she cannot: Mrs. 
Pennycherry felt she no longer could. 

To the stranger Miss Kite was a witty and delightful 
conversationalist of most attractive personality. Miss 
Kite had one failing : it was lack of vanity. She was un- 
aware of her own delicate and refined beauty. If Miss Kite 
could only see herself with his, the stranger's eyes, the modesty 
that rendered her distrustful of her natural charms would 
fall from her. The stranger was so sure of it Miss Kite 
determined to put it to the test. One evening, an hour 
before dinner, there entered the drawing-room, when the 



256 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

stranger only was there and before the gas was lighted, a 
pleasant, good-looking lady, somewhat pale, with neatly- 
arranged brown hair, who demanded of the stranger if he 
knew her. All her body was trembling, and her voice 
seemed inclined to run away from her and become a sob. 
But when the stranger, looking straight into her eyes, told 
her that from the likeness he thought she must be Miss 
Kite's younger sister, but much prettier, it became a laugh 
instead : and that evening the golden-haired Miss Kite dis- 
appeared never to show her high-coloured face again ; and 
what perhaps, more than all else, might have impressed some 
former habitue of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square with awe, 
it was that no one in the house made even a passing inquiry 
concerning her. 

Sir William's cousin the stranger thought an acquisition 
to any boarding-house. A lady of high-class family ! There 
was nothing outward or visible perhaps to tell you that she 
was of high-class family. She herself, naturally, would 
not mention the fact, yet somehow you felt it. Uncon- 
sciously she set a high-class tone, diffused an atmosphere of 
gentle manners. Not that the stranger had said this in so 
many words ; Sir William's cousin gathered that he thought 
it, and felt herself in agreement with him. 

For Mr. Longcord and his partner, as representatives 
of the best type of business men, the stranger had a great 
respect. With what unfortunate results to themselves has 
been noted. The curious thing is that the Firm appeared 
content with the price they had paid for the stranger's 
good opinion — had even, it was rumoured, acquired a 
taste for honest men's respect — that in the long run 
was likely to cost them dear. But we all have our pet 
extravagance. 

The Colonel and Mrs. Devine both suffered a good deal 
at first from the necessity imposed upon them of learning, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 257 

somewhat late in life, new tricks. In the privacy of their 
own apartment they condoled with one another. 

"Tomfool nonsense," grumbled the Colonel, "you and I 
starting billing and cooing at our age !" 

"What I object to," said Mrs. Devine, "is the feeling that 
somehow I am being made to do it." 

"The idea that a man and his wife cannot have their 
little joke together for fear of what some impertinent jacka- 
napes may think of them 1 it's damn ridiculous," the Colonel 
exploded. 

"Even when he isn't there," said Mrs. Devine, "I seem 
to see him looking at me with those vexing eyes of his. 
Really the man quite haunts me." 

"I have met him somewhere," mused the Colonel, "I'll 
swear I've met him somewhere. I wish to goodness he 
would go." 

A hundred things a day the Colonel wanted to say to Mrs. 
Devine, a hundred things a day Mrs. Devine would have liked 
to observe to the Colonel. But by the time the opportunity 
occurred — when nobody else was by to hear — all interest 
in saying them was gone. 

"Women will be women," was the sentiment with which 
the Colonel consoled himself. "A man must bear with 
them — must never forget that he is a gentleman." 

"Oh, well, I suppose they're all alike," laughed Mrs. 
Devine to herself, having arrived at that stage of despair 
when one seeks refuge in cheerfulness. "What's the use 
of putting oneself out — it does no good, and only upsets 
one." 

There is a certain satisfaction in feeling you are bearing 
with heroic resignation the irritating follies of others. 
Colonel and Mrs. Devine came to enjoy the luxury of much 
self-approbation. 

But the person seriously annoyed by the stranger's bigoted 



258 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

belief in the innate goodness of everyone he came across 
was the languid, handsome Miss Devine. The stranger 
would have it that Miss Devine was a noble-souled, high- 
minded young woman, something midway between a Flora 
Macdonald and a Joan of Arc. Miss Devine, on the contrary, 
knew herself to be a sleek, luxury-loving animal, quite will- 
ing to sell herself to the bidder who could offer her the 
finest clothes, the richest foods, the most sumptuous sur- 
roundings. Such a bidder was to hand in the person of a 
retired bookmaker, a somewhat greasy old gentleman, but 
exceedingly rich and undoubtedly fond of her. 

Miss Devine, having made up her mind that the thing had 
got to be done, was anxious that it should be done quickly. 
And here it was that the stranger's ridiculous opinion of 
her not only irritated but inconvenienced her. Under the 
very eyes of a person — however foolish — convinced that 
you are possessed of all the highest attributes of your sex, 
it is difficult to behave as though actuated by only the basest 
motives. A dozen times had Miss Devine determined to 
end the matter by formal acceptance of her elderly ad- 
mirer's large and flabby hand, and a dozen times — the vision 
intervening of the stranger's grave, believing eyes — had 
Miss Devine refused decided answer. The stranger would 
one day depart. Indeed, he had told her himself, he was but 
a passing traveller. When he was gone it would be easier. 
So she thought at the time. 

One afternoon the stranger entered the room where she 
was standing by the window, looking out upon the bare 
branches of the trees in Bloomsbury Square. She remem- 
bered afterwards, it was just such another foggy afternoon 
as the afternoon of the stranger's arrival three months be- 
fore. No one else was in the room. The stranger closed 
the door, and came towards her with that curious, quick- 
leaping step of his. His long coat was tightly buttoned, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 259 

and in his hands he carried his old felt hat and the massive 
knotted stick that was almost a staff. 

"I have come to say good-bye," explained the stranger. 
"I am going." 

"I shall not see you again ?" asked the girl. 

"I cannot say," replied the stranger. "But you will 
think of me?" 

"Yes," she answered with a smile, "I can promise that." 

"And I shall always remember you," promised the stranger, 
" and I wish you every joy — the joy of love, the joy of a 
happy marriage." 

The girl winced. "Love and marriage are not always 
the same thing," she said. 

"Not always," agreed the stranger, "but in your case 
they will be one." 

She looked at him. 

"Do you think I have not noticed .^" smiled the stranger, 
"a gallant, handsome lad, and clever. You love him and 
he loves you. I could not have gone away without know- 
ing it was well with you." 

Her gaze wandered towards the fading light. 

"Ah, yes, I love him," she answered petulantly. "Your 
eyes can see clearly enough, when they want to. But one 
does not live on love, in our world. I will tell you the man 
I am going to marry if you care to know." She would not 
meet his eyes. She kept her gaze still fixed upon the dingy 
trees, the mist beyond, and spoke rapidly and vehemently : 
"The man who can give me all my soul's desire — money 
and the things that money can buy. You think me a 
woman, I'm only a pig. He is moist, and breathes like a 
porpoise; with cunning in place of a brain, and the rest 
of him mere stomach. But he is good enough for me." 

She hoped this would shock the stranger and that now, 
perhaps, he would go. It irritated her to hear him only laugh. 



26o FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

"No," he said, *'you will not marry him." 

"Who will stop me?" she cried angrily. 

"Your Better Self." 

His voice had a strange ring of authority, compelling her 
to turn and look upon his face. Yes, it was true, the fancy 
that from the very first had haunted her. She had met 
him, talked to him — in silent country roads, in crowded 
city streets, where was it ? And always in talking with him 
her spirit had been lifted up : she had been — what he had 
always thought her. 

"There are those," continued the stranger (and for the 
first time she saw that he was of a noble presence, that his 
gentle, childlike eyes could also command), "whose Better 
Self lies slain by their own hand and troubles them no more. 
But yours, my child, you have let grow too strong ; it will 
ever be your master. You must obey. Flee from it and it 
will follow you ; you cannot escape it. Insult it and it 
will chastise you with burning shame, with stinging self- 
reproach from day to day." The sternness faded from the 
beautiful face, the tenderness crept back. He laid his hand 
upon the young girl's shoulder. "You will marry your 
lover," he smiled. "With him you will walk the way of 
sunlight and of shadow." 

And the girl, looking up into the strong, calm face, knew 
that it would be so, that the power of resisting her Better 
Self had passed away from her for ever. 

"Now," said the stranger, "come to the door with me. 
Leave-takings are but wasted sadness. Let me pass out 
quietly. Close the door softly behind me." 

She thought that perhaps he would turn his face again, 
but she saw no more of him than the odd roundness of his 
back under the tightly buttoned coat, before he faded into 
the gathering fog. 

Then softly she closed the door. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 261 

THE STORY OF THE LAST TRUMP ^ 

By H. G. Wells 



"After this war," said Wilkins, "after its revelation of 
horrors and waste and destruction, it is impossible that 
people will tolerate any longer that system of diplomacy and 
armaments and national aggression that has brought this 
catastrophe upon mankind. This is the war that will end 
war." 

"Osborn," said Boon, "Osborn." 

"But after all the world has seen !" 

"The world doesn't see," said Boon. . . . 

Boon's story of the Last Trump may well come after this 
to terminate my book. It has been by no means an easy 
task to assemble the various portions of this manuscript. It 
is written almost entirely in pencil, and sometimes the writ- 
ing is so bad as to be almost illegible. But here at last it 
is, as complete, I think, as Boon meant it to be. It is his 
epitaph upon his dream of the Mind of the Race. 



The story of the Last Trump begins in heaven, and it 
ends in all sorts of places round about the world. 

Heaven, you must know, is a kindly place, and the blessed 
ones do not go on forever singing Alleluia, whatever you 
may have been told. For they, too, are finite creatures, 
and must be fed with their eternity in little bits, as one 
feeds a chick or a child. So there are mornings and changes 
and freshness, there is time to condition their lives. And 
the children are still children, gravely eager about their 

^ From " Boon," pp. 301-308. Reprinted by special permission of the 
author and the publishers, the George H. Doran Company. 



262 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

playing and ready always for new things; just children 
they are, but blessed as you see them in the pictures be- 
neath the careless feet of the Lord God. And one of these 
blessed children routing about in an attic — for heaven is, 
of course, full of the most heavenly attics, seeing that it 
has children — came upon a number of instruments stored 
away, and laid its little chubby hands upon them. . . . 

Now, indeed, I cannot tell what these instruments were, 
for to do so would be to invade mysteries. . . . But one 
I may tell of, and that was a great brazen trumpet which 
the Lord God had made when He made the world — for the 
Lord God finishes all His jobs — to blow when the time for 
our Judgement came round. And He had made it and left 
it; there it was, and everything was settled exactly as 
the Doctrine of Predestination declares. And this blessed 
child conceived one of those unaccountable passions of child- 
hood for its smoothness and brassiness, and he played with 
it and tried to blow it, and trailed it about with him out of 
the attic into the gay and golden streets, and, after many 
fitful wanderings, to those celestial battlements of crystal 
of which you have doubtless read. And there the blessed 
child fell to counting the stars, and forgot all about the trum- 
pet beside him until a flourish of his elbow sent it over. 

Down fell the trump, spinning as it fell, and for a day or 
so, which seemed but moments in heaven, the blessed child 
watched its fall until it was a glittering little speck of bright- 
ness. . . . 

When it looked a second time the trump was gone. . . . 
I do not know what happened to that child when at last it 
was time for Judgement Day and that shining trumpet was 
missed. I know that Judgement Day is long overpassed, 
because of the wickedness of the world ; I think perhaps it 
was in ioooa.d. when the expected Day should have dawned 
that never came, but no other heavenly particulars do I 



ILLUSTRATIONS 263 

know at all, because now my scene changes to the narrow 
ways of this Earth. . . . And the Prologue in heaven ends. 



And now the scene is a dingy little shop in Caledonian 
Market, where things of an incredible worthlessness lie in 
wait for such as seek after an impossible cheapness. In the 
window, as though it had always been there and never any- 
where else, lies a long, battered, discoloured trumpet of 
brass that no prospective purchaser has ever been able to 
sound. In it mice shelter, and dust and fluff have gathered 
after the fashion of this world. The keeper of the shop is 
a very old man, and he bought the shop long ago, but 
already this trumpet was there; he has no idea whence it 
came, nor its country or origin, nor anything about it. But 
once in a moment of enterprise that led to nothing he de- 
cided to call it an Ancient Ceremonial Shawm, though he 
ought to have known that whatever a shawm may be the 
last thing it was likely to be is a trumpet, seeing that 
they are always mentioned together. And above it hung 
concertinas and melodeons and cornets and tin whistles and 
mouth-organs and all that rubbish of musical instruments 
which delight the hearts of the poor. Until one day two 
blackened young men from the big motor works in the 
Pansophist Road stood outside the window and argued. 

They argued about these instruments in stock and how 
you made these instruments sound, because they were fond 
of argument, and one asserted and the other denied that he 
could make every instrument in the place sound a note. 
And the argument rose high, and led to a bet. 

"Supposing, of course, that the instrument is in order," 
said Hoskin, who was betting he could. 

"That's understood," said Briggs. 



264 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

And then they called as witnesses certain other young 
and black and greasy men in the same employment, and 
after much argument and discussion that lasted through 
the afternoon, they went in to the little old dealer about 
tea-time, just as he was putting a blear-eyed, stinking 
paraffin-lamp to throw an unfavorable light upon his always 
very unattractive window. And after great difficulty they 
arranged that for the sum of one shilling, paid in advance, 
Hoskin should have a try at every instrument in the shop 
that Briggs chose to indicate. 

And the trial began. 

The third instrument that was pitched upon by Briggs 
for the trial was the strange trumpet that lay at the bottom 
of the window, the trumpet that you, who have read the 
Introduction, know was the trumpet for the Last Trump. 
And Hoskin tried and tried again, and then, blowing des- 
perately, hurt his ears. But he could get no sound from the 
trumpet. Then he examined the trumpet more carefully 
and discovered the mice and fluff and other things in it, and 
demanded that it should be cleaned ; and the old dealer, 
nothing loath, knowing they were used to automobile-horns 
and such-like instruments, agreed to let them clean it on con- 
dition that they left it shiny. So the young men, after 
making a suitable deposit, — which, as you shall hear, was 
presently confiscated, — went off with the trumpet, propos- 
ing to clean it next day at the works and polish it with the 
peculiarly excellent brass polish employed upon the honk- 
honk horns of the firm. And this they did, and Hoskin 
tried again. 

But he tried in vain. Whereupon there arose a great argu- 
ment about the trumpet, whether it was in order or not, 
whether it was possible for any one to sound it. For if not, 
then clearly it was outside the condition of the bet. 

Others among the young men tried it, including two who 



ILLUSTRATIONS 265 

played wind instruments in a band and were musically 
knowing men. After their own failure they were strongly 
on the side of Hoskin and strongly against Briggs, and most 
of the other young men were of the same opinion. 

"Not a bit of it," said Briggs, who was a man of resource. 
"7*11 show you that it can be sounded." 

And taking the instrument in his hand, he went toward 
a peculiarly powerful foot blow-pipe that stood at the far 
end of the tool-shed. "Good old Briggs!" said one of the 
other young men, and opinion veered about. 

Briggs removed the blow-pipe from its bellows and tube, 
and then adjusted the tube very carefully to the mouthpiece 
of the trumpet. Then with great deliberation he produced 
a piece of beeswaxed string from a number of other strange 
and filthy contents in his pocket, and tied the tube to the 
mouthpiece. And then he began to work the treadle of the 
bellows. 

"Good old Briggs!" said the one who had previously ad- 
mired him. 

And then something incomprehensible happened. 

It was a flash. Whatever else it was it was a flash. And 
a sound that seemed to coincide exactly with the flash. 

Afterward the young men agreed to it that the trumpet 
blew to bits. It blew to bits and vanished, and they were all 
flung upon their faces — not backward, be it noted, but on 
their faces — and Briggs was stunned and scared. The 
tool-shed windows were broken and the various apparatus 
and cars around were much displaced, and no traces of the 
trumpet were ever discovered. 

That last particular puzzled and perplexed poor Briggs 
very much. It puzzled and perplexed him the more because 
he had had an impression so extraordinary, so incredible, 
that he was never able to describe it to any other living 
person. But his impression was this : that the flash that 



266 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

came with the sound came not from the trumpet, but to it, 
that it smote down to it and took it, and that its shape was 
in the exact likeness of a hand and arm of fire. 



And that was not all ; that was not the only strange thing 
about the disappearance of that battered trumpet. There 
was something else even more difficult to describe, an effect 
as though for one instant something opened. 

The young men who worked with Hoskin and Briggs had 
that clearness of mind which comes of dealing with ma- 
chinery, and all felt this indescribable something else, as if 
for an instant the world was not the world, but something 
lit and wonderful, larger. 

This is what one of them said of it. 

"I felt," he said, "just for a minute as though I was 
blown to kingdom come." 

"It is just how it took me," said another. "*Lord,' I 
says, 'here's Judgement Day!' and there I was sprawling 
among the files. . . ." 

But none of the others felt that he could say anything more 
definite than that. 



Moreover, there was a storm. All over the world there 
was a storm that puzzled meteorology, a moment's gale that 
left the atmosphere in a state of wild commotion, rains, 
tornadoes, depressions, irregularities for weeks. News 
came of it from all the quarters of the earth. 

All over China, for example, that land of cherished graves, 
there was a dust-storm ; dust leaped into the air. A kind 
of earthquake shook Europe — an earthquake that seemed 
to have at heart the peculiar interests of Mr. Algernon 



ILLUSTRATIONS 267 

Ashton : everywhere it cracked mausoleums and shivered 
the pavements of cathedrals, swished the flower-beds of 
cemeteries, and tossed tombstones aside. A- crematorium 
in Texas blew up. The sea was greatly agitated, and the 
beautiful harbour of Sydney, in Australia, was seen to be 
littered with sharks floating upside down in manifest dis- 
tress. 

And all about the world a sound was heard like the sound 
of a trumpet instantly cut short. 



But this much is only the superficial dressing of the story. 
The reality is something different. It is this : that in an 
instant, and for an instant, the dead lived, and all that are 
alive in the world did for a moment see the Lord God and 
all His powers. His hosts of angels, and all His array looking 
down upon them. They saw Him as one sees by a flash of 
lightning in the darkness, and then instantly the world was 
opaque again, limited, petty, habitual. That is the tre- 
mendous reality of this story. Such glimpses have hap- 
pened in individual cases before. The lives of the saints 
abound in them. Such a glimpse it was that came to Rabin- 
dranath Tagore upon the burning ghat at Benares. But 
this was not an individual but a world experience; the flash 
came to every one. Not always was it quite the same, 
and thereby the doubter found his denials when presently a 
sort of discussion broke out in the obscurer Press. For this 
one testified that it seemed that "One stood very near to 
me," and another saw "all the hosts of heaven flame up 
toward the Throne." 

And there were others who had a vision of brooding 
watchers, and others who imagined great sentinels before a 
veiled figure, and some one who felt nothing more divine 



268 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

than a sensation of happiness and freedom such as one gets 
from a sudden burst of sunshine in the spring. ... So 
that one is forced to believe that something more than won- 
derfully wonderful, something altogether strange, was seen, 
and that all these various things that people thought they 
saw were only interpretations drawn from their experiences 
and their imaginations. It was a light, it was beauty, it 
was high and solemn, it made this world seem a flimsy 
transparency. . . . 

Then it had vanished. . . . 

And people were left with the question of what they had 
seen, and just how much it mattered. 



A little old lady sat by the fire in a small sitting-room in 
West Kensington. Her cat was in her lap, her spectacles 
were on her nose; she was reading the morning's paper, 
and beside her, on a little occasional table, was her tea and a 
buttered muffin. She had finished the crimes and she was 
reading about the Royal Family. When she had read all 
there was to read about the Royal Family, she put down the 
paper, deposited the cat on the hearth-rug, and turned to 
her tea. She had poured out her first cup and she had 
just taken up a quadrant of muffin when the trump and 
the flash came. Through its instant duration she remained 
motionless with the quadrant of muffin poised halfway to 
her mouth. Then very slowly she put the morsel down. 

"Now, what was that?" she said. 

She surveyed the cat, but the cat was quite calm. Then 
she looked very, very hard at her lamp. It was a patent 
safety-lamp, and had always behaved very well. Then she 
stared at the window, but the curtains were drawn, and 
everything was in order. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 269 

"One might think I was going to be ill," she said, and 
resumed her toast. 

8 

Not far away from this old lady, not more than three- 
quarters of a mile at most, sat Mr. Parchester in his luxurious 
study, writing a perfectly beautiful, sustaining sermon about 
the Need of Faith in God. He was a handsome, earnest, 
modern preacher, he was rector of one of our big West End 
churches, and he had amassed a large, fashionable congre- 
gation. Every Sunday, and at convenient intervals during 
the week, he fought against Modern Materialism, Scientific 
Education, Excessive Puritanism, Pragmatism, Doubt, 
Levity, Selfish Individualism, Further Relaxation of the 
Divorce Laws, all the Evils of our Time — and anything 
else that was unpopular. He believed quite simply, he said, 
in all the old, simple, kindly things. He had the face of a 
saint, but he had rendered this generally acceptable by 
growing side-whiskers. And nothing could tame the beauty 
of his voice. 

He was an enormous asset in the spiritual life of the 
metropolis — to give it no harsher name — and his fluent 
periods had restored faith and courage to many a poor soul 
hovering on the brink of the dark river of thought. . . . 

And just as beautiful Christian maidens played a won- 
derful part in the last days of Pompeii, in winning proud 
Roman hearts to a hated and despised faith, so Mr. Par- 
chester's naturally graceful gestures, and his simple, melo- 
dious, trumpet voice won back scores of our half-pagan rich 
women to church attendance and the social work of which 
his church was the centre. . . . 

And now by the light of an exquisitely shaded electric lamp 
he was writing this sermon of quiet, confident belief (with 
occasional hard smacks, perfect stingers in fact, at current 



270 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATIOIS 

unbelief and rival leaders of opinion), in the simple, divine 
faith of our fathers. ... 

When there came this truncated trump and this vision. . . . 

9 

Of all the innumerable multitudes who for the infinitesimal 
fraction of a second had this glimpse of the Divinity, none 
were so blankly and profoundly astonished as Mr. Par- 
chester. For — it may be because of his subtly spiritual 
nature — he saw^ and seeing believed. He dropped his 
pen and let it roll across his manuscript, he sat stunned, 
every drop of blood fled from his face and his lips and his 
eyes dilated. 

While he had just been writing and arguing about God, 
there was God ! 

The curtain had been snatched back for an instant. It 
had fallen again ; but his mind had taken a photographic 
impression of everything that he had seen — the grave 
presences, the hierarchy, the effulgence, the vast concourse, 
the terrible, gentle eyes. He felt it, as though the vision 
still continued, behind the bookcases, behind the pictured 
wall and the curtained window : even now there was judgement ! 

For quite a long time he sat, incapable of more than ap- 
prehending this supreme realization. His hands were held 
out limply upon the desk before him. And then very slowly 
his staring eyes came back to immediate things, and fell 
upon the scattered manuscript on which he had been 
engaged. He read an unfinished sentence and slowly re- 
covered its intention. As he did so, a picture of his congre- 
gation came to him as he saw it from the pulpit during his 
evening sermon, as he had intended to see it on the Sunday 
evening that was at hand, with Lady Rupert in her sitting 
and Lady Blex in hers and Mrs. Munbridge, the rich and 
in her Jewish way very attractive Mrs. Munbridge, running 



ILLUSTRATIONS 27 1 

them close in her adoration, and each with one or two friends 
they had brought to adore him, and behind them the Hex- 
hams and the Wassinghams and behind them others and 
others and others, ranks and ranks of people, and the gal- 
leries on either side packed with worshippers of a less dom- 
inant class, and the great organ and his magnificent choir 
waiting to support him and supplement him, and the great 
altar to the left of him, and the beautiful new Lady Chapel, 
done by Roger Fry and Wyndham Lewis and all the latest 
people in art, to the right. He thought of the listening 
multitude, seen through the haze of the thousand electric 
candles, and how he had planned the paragraphs of his dis- 
course so that the notes of his beautiful voice should float 
slowly down, like golden leaves in autumn, into the smooth 
tarn of their silence, word by word, phrase by phrase, until 
he came to — 

"Now to God the Father, God the Son " 

And all the time he knew that Lady Blex would watch 
his face and Mrs. Munbridge, leaning those graceful shoul- 
ders of hers a little forward, would watch his face. . . . 

Many people would watch his face. 
■'■ All sorts of people would come to Mr. Parchester's ser- 
vices at times. Once it was said Mr. Balfour had come. 
Just to hear him. After his sermons-, the strangest people 
would come and make confessions in the beautifully furnished 
reception-room beyond the vestry. All sorts of people. 
Once or twice he had asked people to come and listen to 
him; and one of them had been a very beautiful woman. 
And often he had dreamt of the people who might come : 
prominent people, influential people, remarkable people. 
But never before had it occurred to Mr. Parchester that, a 
little hidden from the rest of the congregation, behind 
the thin veil of this material world, there was another audi- 
torium. And that God also, God also, watched his face. 



272 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

And watched him through and through. 

Terror seized upon Mr. Parchester. 

He stood up, as though Divinity had come into the room 
before him. He was trembling. He felt smitten and about 
to be smitten. 

He perceived that it was hopeless to try to hide what he 
had written, what he had thought, the unclean egotism he 
had become. 

"I did not know," he said at last. 

The click of the door behind him warned him that he 
was not alone. He turned, and saw Miss Skelton, his typist, 
for it was her time to come for his manuscript and copy 
it out in the specially legible type he used. For a moment 
he stared at her strangely. 

She looked at him with those deep, adoring eyes of hers : 
"Am I too soon, sir.?" she asked In her slow, unhappy 
voice, and seemed prepared for a noiseless departure. 

He did not answer immediately. Then he said: "Miss 
Skelton, the Judgement of God is close at hand !" 

And seeing she stood perplexed, he said — 

"Miss Skelton, how can you expect me to go on acting 
and mouthing this Tosh when the Sword of Truth hangs 
over us } " 

Something in her face made him ask a question. 

"Did you see anything?" he asked. 

"I thought it was because I was rubbing my eyes." 

"Then indeed there is a God ! And He is watching us 
now. And all this about us, this sinful room, this foolish 
costume, this preposterous life of blasphemous pretension 



He stopped short, with a kind of horror on his face. 

With a hopeless gesture he rushed by her. He appeared 
wild-eyed upon the landing before his man-servant, who 
was carrying a scuttle of coal upstairs. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 273 

"Brompton," he said, "what are you doing?" 

"Coal, sir." 

"Put it down, man!" he said. "Are you not an im- 
mortal soul ? God is here ! As close as my " hand ! Re- 
pent ! Turn to Him ! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand ! " 



10 

Now if you are a policeman perplexed by a sudden and 
unaccountable collision between a taxicab and an electric 
standard, complicated by a blinding flash and a sound like 
an abbreviated trump from an automobile horn, you do not 
want to be bothered by a hatless clerical gentleman sud- 
denly rushing out of a handsome private house and telling 
you that "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" You 
are respectful to him because it is the duty of a policeman 
to be respectful to gentlemen, but you say to him, " Sorry I 
can't attend to that now, sir. One thing at a time. Fve 
got this little accident to see to." And if he persists in 
dancing round the gathering crowd and coming at you again, 
you say : "Pm afraid I must ask you just to get away from 
here, sir. You aren't being an 'elp, sir." And if, on the 
other hand, you are a well-trained clerical gentleman, who 
knows his way about in the world, you do not go on pes- 
tering a policeman on duty after he has said that, even al- 
though you think God is looking at you and Judgement is 
close at hand. You turn away and go on, a little damped, 
looking for some one else more likely to pay attention to 
your tremendous tidings. 

And so it happened to the Reverend Mr. Parchester. 

He experienced a curious little recession of confidence. 
He went on past quite a number of people without saying 
anything further, and the next person he accosted was a 
flower-woman sitting by her basket at the corner of Chexing- 

T 



274 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

ton Square. She was unable to stop him at once when he 
began to talk to her because she was tying up a big bundle 
of white chrysanthemums and had an end of string behind 
her teeth. And her daughter who stood beside her was 
the sort of girl who wouldn't say "Bo!" to a goose. 

"Do you know, my good woman," said Mr. Parchester, 
"that while we poor creatures of earth go about our poor 
business here, while we sin and blunder and follow every 
sort of base end, close to us, above us, around us, watching 
us, judging us, are God and His holy angels ? I have had 
a vision, and I am not the only one. I have seen. We 
are in the Kingdom of Heaven now and here, and Judgement 
is all about us now ! Have you seen nothing ? No light ? 
No sound .^ No warning.?" 

By this time the old flower-seller had finished her bunch 
of flowers and could speak. "I saw it," she said. "And 
Mary — she saw it." 

"Well?" said Mr. Parchester. 

"But, Lord! It don't mean nothing!" said the old 
flower-seller. 

II 

At that a kind of chill fell upon Mr. Parchester. He went 
on across Chexington Square by his own inertia. 

He was still about as sure that he had seen God as he had 
been in his study, but now he was no longer sure that the 
world would believe that he had. He felt perhaps that this 
idea of rushing out to tell people was precipitate and inad- 
visable. Aft ' all, a priest in the Church of England is only 
one unit in a great machine ; and in a world-wide spiritual 
crisis it should be the task of that great machine to act as 
one resolute body. This isolated crying aloud in the street 
was unworthy of a consecrated priest. It was a dissenting 
kind of thing to do. A vulgar individualistic screaming. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 275 

He thought suddenly that he would go and tell his bishop — 
the great Bishop Wampach. He called a taxicab, and within 
half an hour he was in the presence of his commanding 
officer. It was an extraordinarily difficult • and painful 
interview. ... 

You see, Mr. Parchester believed. The Bishop impressed 
him as being quite angrily resolved not to believe. And 
for the first time in his career Mr. Parchester realized just 
how much jealous hostility a beautiful, fluent, and popular 
preacher may arouse in the minds of the hierarchy. It 
wasn't, he felt, a conversation. It was like flinging oneself 
into the paddock of a bull that has long been anxious to 
gore one. 

"Inevitably," said the bishop, "this theatricalism, this 
star-turn business, with its extreme spiritual excitements, its 
exaggerated soul crises and all the rest of it, leads to such 
a breakdown as afflicts you. Inevitably ! You were at 
least wise to come to me. I can see you are only in the 
beginning of your trouble, that already in your mind fresh 
hallucinations are gathering to overwhelm you, voices, special 
charges and missions, strange revelations. ... I wish I 
had the power to suspend you right away, to send you into 
retreat. . . ." 

Mr. Parchester made a violent eff'ort to control himself. 
"But I tell you," he said, "that I saw God!" He added, 
as if to reassure himself: "More plainly, more certainly, 
than I see you." 

"Of course," said the Bishop, "this is how strange new 
sects come into existence ; this is how false prophets spring 
out of the bosom of the Church. Loose-minded, excitable 
men of your stamp " 

Mr. Parchester, to his own astonishment, burst into 
tears. " But I tell you," he wept, "'He is here. I have seen. 
I know." 



276 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

"Don't talk such nonsense!" said the Bishop. "There 
is no one here but you and I." 

Mr. Parchester expostulated. "But," he protested, 
"He is omnipresent." 

The Bishop controlled an expression of impatience. "It 
is characteristic of your condition," he said, "that you are 
unable to distinguish between a matter of fact and a spiritual 
truth. . . . Now listen to me. If you value your sanity 
and public decency and the discipline of the Church, go right 
home from here and go to bed. Send for Broadhays, who 
will prescribe a safe sedative. And read something calming 
and graceful and purifying. For my own part, I should be dis- 
posed to recommend the * Life of Saint Francis of Assisi.' "... 



12 

Unhappily Mr. Parchester did not go home. He went 
out from the Bishop's residence stunned and amazed, and 
suddenly upon his desolation came the thought of Mrs. 
Munbridge. . . . 

She would understand. ... 

He was shown up to her own little sitting-room. She 
had already gone up to her room to dress, but when she 
heard that he had called, and wanted very greatly to see her, 
she slipped on a loose, beautiful tea-gown, neglige thing, 
and hurried to him. He tried to tell her everything, but she 
only kept saying "There ! there !" She was sure he wanted 
a cup of tea, he looked so pale and exhausted. She rang to 
have the tea equipage brought back ; she put the dear saint 
in an arm-chair by the fire; she put cushions about him, 
and ministered to him. And when she began partially to 
comprehend what he had experienced, she suddenly realized 
that she too had experienced it. That vision had been a 
brain-wave between their two linked and sympathetic 



ILLUSTRATIONS 277 

brains. And that thought glowed in her as she brewed his 
tea with her own hands. He had been weeping ! How 
tenderly he felt all these things ! He was more sensitive than 
a woman. What madness to have expected understanding 
from the Bishop ! But that was just like his unworldliness. 
He was not fit to take care of himself. A wave of tenderness 
carried her away. "Here is your tea!" she said, bending 
over him, and fully conscious of her fragrant warmth and 
sweetness, and suddenly, she could never afterwards explain 
why she was so, she was moved to kiss him on his brow. . . . 

How indescribable is the comfort of a true-hearted womanly 
friend ! The safety of it ! The consolation ! . . . 

About half-past seven that evening Mr. Parchester re- 
turned to his own home, and Brompton admitted him. 
Brompton was relieved to find his employer looking quite 
restored and ordinary again. 

"Brompton," said Mr. Parchester, "I will not have the 
usual dinner to-night. Just a single mutton cutlet and 
one of those quarter-bottles of Perrier Jouet on a tray in my 
study. I shall have to finish my sermon to-night." 

And he had promised Mrs. Munbridge he would preach 
that sermon specially for her. 



13 

And as it was with Mr. Parchester and Brompton and 
Mrs. Munbridge, and the taxi-driver and the policeman and 
the little old lady and the automobile mechanics and Mr. 
Parchester's secretary and the Bishop, so It was with all the 
rest of the world. If a thing is sufficiently strange and great 
no one will perceive it. Men will go on In their own ways 
though one rose from the dead to tell them that the King- 
dom of Heaven was at hand, though the Kingdom itself and 
all its glory became visible, blinding their eyes. They 



278 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

and their ways are one. Men will go on in their ways as 
rabbits will go on feeding in their hutches within a hundred 
yards of a battery of artillery. For rabbits are rabbits, 
and made to eat and breed, and men are human beings and 
creatures of habit and custom and prejudice ; and what has 
made them, what will judge them, what will destroy them — 
they may turn their eyes to it at times as the rabbits will 
glance at the concussion of the guns, but it will never draw 
them away from eating their lettuce and sniffing after 
their does. . . . 



ILLUSTRATIONS 279 

TWO PLAYS 1 

BY ALFRED SUTRO 

THE MAN ON THE KERB 

A Duologue 

The Persons of the Play 

Joseph Matthews 
Mary (his Wife) 

Time — The present 

Scene — Their home in the West End 

Scene : An underground room, bare of any furniture 
except two or three broken chairs, a tattered mattress on 
the stone floor and an old trunk. On a packing-chest 
are a few pots and pans and a kettle. A few sacks are 
spread over the floor, close to the empty grate; the walls 
are discoloured, with plentiful signs of damp oozing through. 
Close to the door, at back, is a window, looking on to the 
area; two of the panes are broken and stuffed with paper. 
On the mattress a child is sleeping, covered with a tat- 
tered old mantle ; Mary is bending over her, crooning a song. 
The woman is still quite young, and must have been very 
pretty ; but her cheeks are hollow and there are great cir- 
cles round her eyes; her face is very pale and bloodless. 
Her dress is painfully worn and shabby, but displays 
pathetic attempts at neatness. The only light in the room 
comes from the street lamp on the pavement above. 

* These plays have been copyrighted in America by the author^s agents, 
Messrs. Samuel French Ltd., 26 Southampton Street, Strand, to whom all ap- 
plications for production, both in England and America, should be addressed. 
Reprinted here by the special permission of the American publishers from 
the volume entitled "Five Little Plays," Brentano's, New York, 1916. 



28o FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Joe comes down the area steps, and enters. His clothes 
are of the familiar colourless, shapeless kind one sees at 
street corners; he would he a pleasant-looking young fel- 
low enough were it not that his face is abnormally lined, 
and pinched, and weather-beaten. He shambles in, with 
the intense weariness of a man who has for hours been 
forcing benumbed limbs to move; he shakes himself, on 
the threshold, dog-fashion, to get rid of the rain. Mary 
first makes sure that the child is asleep, then rises eagerly 
and goes to him. Her face falls as she notes his air of de- 
jection. 

Mary. [Wistfully.] Nothing, Joe ? 

Joe. Nothing. Not a farthing. Nothing. 

[Mary turns away and checks a moan* 
Joe. Nothing at all. Same as yesterday — worse than 
yesterday — I did bring home a few coppers — And you ? 

Mary. A lady gave Minnie some food 

Joe. [Heartily.] Bless her for that ! 

Mary. Took her into the pastrycook's, Joe 



Joe. And the kiddie had a tuck-out.^ Thank God! 
And you 1 

Mary. Minnie managed to hide a great big bun for me. 

Joe. The lady didn't give you anything ? 

Mary. Only a lecture, Joe, for bringing the child out 
on so bittter a day. 

Joe. [With a sour laugh, as he sits on a chair.] Ho, ho ! 
Always so ready with their lectures, aren't they } " Shouldn't 
beg, my man ! Never give to beggars in the street ! " — 
Look at me, I said to one of them. Feel my arm. Tap 
my chest. I tell you I'm starving, and they're starving at 
home. — "Never give to beggars in the street." 

Mary. [Laying a hand on his arm.] Oh, Joe, you're wet ! 

Joe. It's been raining hard the last three hours — pour^ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 281 

ing. My stars, it's cold. Couldn't we raise a bit of fire, 
Mary ? 
, Mary. With what, Joe .? 

Joe. [After a look round, suddenly getting up, seizing a 
ricketty chair by the wall, breaking off the legs.] With this ! 
Wonderful fine furniture they give you on the Hire System — 
so solid and substantial — as advertised. [He breaks the 
flimsy thing up, as he speaks.] And to think we paid for this 
muck, in the days we were human beings — paid about 
three times its value ! And to think of the poor devils, poor 
devils like us, who sweated their life-blood out to make it — 
and of the blood-sycking devils who sold it and got fat on 
it — and now back it goes to the devil it came from, and 
we can at least get warm for a minute. [He crams the wood 
into the grate.] Got any paper, Mary 1 

Mary. [Taking an old newspaper from the trunk.] Here, 
Joe. 

Joe. That will help to build up a fire. [He glances at it, 
then lays it carefully underneath the wood. Mary gets lamp 
from table.] The Daily Something or other — that tells 
the world what a happy people we are — how proud of be- 
longing to an Empire on which the sun never sets. And 
I'd sell Gibraltar to-night for a sausage with mashed potatoes, 
and let Russia take India if some one would give me a clerk- 
ship at a pound a week. — There, in you go! A match,, 
Mary ? 

Mary. [Standing above Joe, handing him one.] Oh, 
Joe, be careful — we've only two left ! 

Joe. I'll be careful. Wait, though — I'll see whether 
there's a bit of tobacco still in my pipe. [He fishes the pipe 
out of his pocket.] A policeman who warned me away from 
the kerb gave me some tobacco. "Mustn't beg," he said. 
"Got a pipe.^ Well, here's some tobacco." I believe he'd 
have given me money. But it was the first kind word I 



282 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

had heard all day, and It choked me. — There's just a bit 
left at the bottom. [He bustles.] Now, first the fire. [He 
puts the match to the paper — it kindles.] And then my pipe. 
[ The fire hums up ; he throws himself in front of it.] Boo-o-oh, 
I'm sizzling. ... I got so wet that I felt the water running 
into my lungs — my feet didn't seem to belong to me — and 
as for my head and nose ! [Yawns.] Well, smoke's good — 
by the powers, I'm getting warm — come closer to it, Mary. 
It's a little after midnight now — and I left home, this fine, 
luxurious British home, just as soon as it was light. And 
I've tramped the streets all day. Net result, a policeman 
gave me a pipeful of tobacco, I lunched off a bit of bread that 
I saw floating down the gutter — and I dined off the kitchen 
smell of the Cafe Royal. That's my day. 

Mary. [Stroking his hand.] Poor boy, poor boy ! 

Joe. I stood for an hour in Leicester Square when the 
theatres emptied, thinking I might earn a copper, calling 
a cab, or something. There they were, all streaming out, 
happy and clean and warm — broughams and motor-cars 

— supper at the Savoy and the Carlton — and a hundred or 
two of us others in the gutter, hungry — looking at them. 
They went off to their supper — it was pouring, and I got 
soaked — and there I stood, dodging the policemen, dodging 
the horses' heads and the motors — and it was always — 

get away, you loafer, get away — get away — get away 

i^ Mary. We've done nothing to deserve it, Joe 

P Joe. [With sudden fury.] Deserve it ! What have I 
ever done wrong ! Wasn't my fault the firm went bankrupt 
and I couldn't get another job. I've a first-rate character 

— I'm respectable — what's the use "i I want to work — 
they won't let me ! 

Mary. That illness of mine ate up all our savings. O 
Joe, I wish I had died ! 
Joe. And left me alone.? That's not kind of you, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 283 

Mary. How about Mrs. Willis ? Is she worrying about 
the rent ? 

Mary. Well, she'd like to have it, of course — they're 
so dreadfully poor themselves — but she says she won't 
turn us out. And I'm going to-morrow to her daughter's 
upstairs — she makes matchboxes, you know — and I don't 
see why I shouldn't try — I could earn nearly a shilling a day. 

Joe. a shilling a day! Princely! [His pipe goes out. 
He takes a last puff at it, squints into it to make sure all the 
tobacco is gone, then lays it down with a sigh.] I reckon FIX 
try making 'em too. I went to the Vestry again, this morn- 
ing, to see whether they'd take me as sweeper — but they've 
thirty names down, ahead of me. I've tried chopping wood, 
but I can't — I begin to cough the third stroke — there's 
something wrong with me inside, somewhere. I've tried 
every Institution on God's earth — and there are others 
before me, and there is no vacancy, and I mustn't beg, 
and I mustn't worry the gentlemen. A shilling a day — 
can one earn as much as that! Why, Mary, that will be 
fourteen shillings a week — an income ! We'll do it ! 

Mary. It's not quite a shilling, Joe — you have to find 
your own paste and odds and ends. And of course it takes 
a few weeks to learn, before you begin to make any money. 

Joe. [Crestfallen.] Does it though ^. And what are we 
going to do, those few weeks t I thought there was a catch 
in it, somewhere. [He gets up and stretches himself.] Well, 
here's a free-born Englishman, able to conduct correspond- 
ence in three languages, bookkeeping by double entry, 
twelve years' experience — and all he's allowed to do is to 
starve. [He stretches himself again.] 

But in spite of all temptations 
To belong to other nations 



[With sudden passion.] God ! I wish I were a Zulu I 



284 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

• Mary. [Edging to him.] Joe 

Joe. [Turning]. Well? 

Mary. Joe, Joe, we've tried very hard, haven't we ? 

Joe. Tried ! Is there a job in this world we'd refuse ? 
Is there anything we'd turn up our nose at? Is there any 
chance we've neglected ? 

Mary. [Stealing nervously to him and laying a hand on 
his arm.] Joe 

Joe. [Raising his head and looking at her.] Yes — what 
is it ? [She stands timidly with downcast eyes.] Well ? Out 
with it, Mary ! 

Mary. [Suddenly.] It's this, Joe. 

[She goes feverishly to the mattress, and from underneath 
it she pulls out a big, fat purse which she hands 
him. 

Joe. [Staring.] A purse ! 

Mary. [Nodding.] Yes. 

Joe. You 

Mary. Found it. 

Joe. [Looking at her.] Found ? 

Mary [Awkwardly.] In a way I did — yes. 

Joe. How ? 

Mary. It came on to rain, Joe — and I went Into a 
Tube Station — and was standing by a bookstall, showing 
Minnie the illustrated papers — and an old lady bought 
one — and she took out her purse — this purse — and paid 
for It — and laid the purse on the board while she fumbled 
to pick up her skirts — and then some one spoke to her — 
a friend, I suppose — and — there were lots of people stand- 
ing about — I don't know how it was — I was out in the 
street, with Minnie 

Joe. You had the purse ? 

Mary. Yes 

Joe. No one followed you ? 



ILLUSTRATIONS 285 

Mary. No one. I couldn't run, as I had to carry Minnie. 

Joe. What made you do it? 

Mary. I don't know — something in me did it — 
She put the purse down just by the side of my hand — 
my fingers clutched it before I knew — and I was out in the 
street. • 

Joe. How much is there in it ? 

Mary. I haven't looked, Joe. 

Joe. [Wondering.] You haven't looked ? 

Mary. No ; I didn't dare. 

Joe. [Sorrowfully.] I didn't think we'd come to this, 
Mary. 

Mary. [Desperately.] We've got to do something. Be- 
fore we can earn any money at making matchboxes we'll 
have to spend some weeks learning. And you've not had 
a decent meal for a month — nor have I. If there's money 
inside this purse you can get some clothes — and for me too 

— I need them ! It's not as though the old lady would 
miss it — she's rich enough — her cloak was real sable — 
and no one can find us out — they can't tell one piece of 
money from the other. It's heavy, Joe — I think there's 
a lot inside. 

Joe. [Weighing it mechanically.] Yes — it's heavy ■ 

Mary. [Eagerly.] Open it, Joe. 

Joe. [Turning to her again.] Why didn't you } 

Mary. I just thought I'd wait — I'd an idea something 
might have happened ; that some one might have stopped 
you in the street, some one with a heart — and that he'd 
have come in with you to-night — and seen us — seen Minnie 

— and said — "Well, here's money — I'll put you on your 
legs again" — And then we'd have given the purse back, 
Joe. 

Joe. [As he still mechanically balances it in his hand.] 
Yes. 



286 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mary. Can't go on like this, can we ? You'll cough all 
night again, as you did yesterday — and the stuff they gave 
you at the Dispensary's no good. If you had clothes, you 
might get some sort of a job perhaps — you know you had 
to give up trying because you were so shabby. 

Joe. They laugh at me. 

Mary. [With a glance at herself.] And I'm really ashamed 
to walk through the streets 

Joe. I know — though I'm getting used to it. Besides, 
there's the kiddie. Let's have a look at her. 

Mary. Be careful you don't wake her, Joe 1 

Joe. There's a fire. 

Mary. She'll be hungry. 

Joe. You said that she had some food .^ 

Mary. That was at three o'clock. And little things 
aren't like us — they want their regular meals. Night 
after night she has been hungry, and I've had nothing to 
give her. That's why I took the purse. 

Joe. [Still holding it mechanically and staring at iu] Yes. 
And, after all, why not ? 

Mary. We can get the poor little thing some warm 
clothes, some good food 

Joe. [Under his breath.] A thief's daughter. 

[Covers his face with his hands, 

Mary. Joe ! 

Joe. Not nice, is it ? Can't be helped, of course. And 
who cares t For three months this game has gone on — 
we getting shabbier, wretcheder, hungrier — no one bothers 
— all they say is " keep off the pavement." Let's see what's 
in the purse. 

Mary. [Eagerly.] Yes, yes ! 

Joe. [Lifting his head as he is on the point of opening the 
purse.] That's the policeman passing. 

Mary. [Impatiently.] Never mind that 



ILLUSTRATIONS 287 

Joe. [Turning to the purse again.] First time in my 
life I've been afraid when I heard the policeman. 

[He has his finger on the catch of the purse when he 
pauses for a moment — then acting on a sudden 
impulse^ makes a dart for the door, opens it, and 
is out, and up the area steps. 
Mary. [With a despairing cry\ Joe ! 

[SA<? flings herself on the mattress, and sobs silently, 
so as not to awaken the child. Joe returns, hang- 
ing his head, dragging one foot before the other. 
Mary. [Still sobbing, but trying to control herself.] Why 
did you do that ? 

Joe. [Humbly.] I don't know 

Mary. You gave it to the policeman ? 
Joe. Yes. 

Mary. What did you tell him } 
Joe. That you had found it. 
Mary. Where } 

Joe. In a Tube Station. Picked it up because we were 
starving. That we hadn't opened it. And that we lived 
here, in this cellar. 

Mary. [With a little shake.] I expect he'll keep it himself ! 
Joe. [Miserably.] Perhaps. 

[There is silence for a moment; she has ceased to cry; 
suddenly she raises herself violently on her elbow, 
Mary. You fool ! You fool ! 
Joe. [Pleading.] Mary ! 

Mary. With your stupid ideas of honesty ! What have 
they done for you, or me ? 

Joe. [Dropping his head again.] It's the kiddie, you 

know — her being a thief's daughter 

Mary. Is that worse than being the daughter of a pair 
of miserable beggars ^ 

Joe. [Under his breath.] I suppose it is, somehow 



288 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mary. You'd rather she went hungry ? 

Joe. [Despairingly.] I don't know how it was — hear- 
ing his tramp up there • 

Mary. You were afraid f 

Joe. I don't want you taken to prison. 

Mary. [fFith a wail] I'll be taken to the graveyard 
soon, in a pauper's coffin ! 

Joe. \Starts suddenly,] Suppose we did that.^ 

Mary. [Staring.] The workhouse ? 

Joe. Why not, after all f That's what it will come to, 
sooner or later. 

Mary. They'd separate us. 

Joe. At least you and the kiddie'd have food. 

Mary. They'd separate us. And I love you, Joe. 
My poor, poor Joe ! I love you. 

[She nestles up to him and takes his hand. 

Joe. [Holding her hand in his, and bending over her.] 
You forgive me for returning the purse ? 

Mary. [Dropping her head on his shoulder.] Forgive 
you ! You were right. It was the cold and the hunger 
maddened me. You were right ! 

Joe. [Springing to his feet, with sudden passion. Mary 
staggers hack.] I wasnH right — I was a coward, a criminal 
— a vile and wicked fool. 

Mary. [Startled.] Joe ! 

Joe. I had money there — money in my hand — money 
that you need so badly, you, the woman I love with all my 
ragged soul — money that would have put food into the 
body of my little girl — money that was mine, that belonged 
to me — and I've given it back, because of my rotten hon- 
esty ! What right have I to be honest } They've made a 
dog of me — what business had I to remember I was a man ? 

Mary. [Following him and laying a hand on his arm.] 
Hush, Joe — you'll wake Minnie. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 289 

Joe. [Turning and staring haggardly at her.] I could 
have got clothes — a job, perhaps — we might' have left this 
cellar. We could have gone out to-morrow and bought things 

— gone into shops — we might have had food, coal 

Mary. Don't, Joe — what's the use ? And who knows 

— it may prove a blessing to us. You told the policeman 
where we lived ? 

Joe. a blessing! I'll get up to-morrow, after having 
coughed out my lungs all night — and I'll go into the streets 
and walk there from left to right and from right to left, stand- 
ing at this corner and at that, peering into men's faces, watch- 
ing people go to their shops and their offices, people who are 
warm and comfortable — and so it will go on, till the end 
comes. 

Mary. [Standing very close to him, almost in a whisper^ 
Why not now, Joe t 

Joe. [With a startled glance at her.] The end I 

Mary. There's no room for us in this world 

Joe. If I'd taken that money 

Mary. It's too late for that now. And I'm glad you 
didn't — yes, I am — I'm glad. We'll go before God clean- 
handed. And we'll say to Him we didn't steal, or do any- 
thing He didn't want us to. And we'll tell Him we've 
died because people wouldn't allow us to live. 

Joe. [With a shudder.] No. Not that — we'll wait, 
Mary. Don't speak of that. 

Mary. [Wistfully.] You've thought of it too ? 

Joe. Thought of it! Don't, Mary, don't! It's bad 
enough, in the night, when I lie there and think of to-mor- 
row ! Something will happen — it must. 

Mary. What .^ We haven't a friend in the world. 

Joe. I may meet some one I used to know. 

Mary. You've met them before — they always refuse 

Joe. [Passionately.] I've done nothing wrong — I 
u 



290 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

haven't drunk or gambled — I can't help being only a clerk, 
and unable to do heavy work ! I can't help my lungs being 
weak ! I've a wife and a child, like other people — and all 
we ask is to be allowed to live ! 

Mary. [Pleading.] Let's give it up, Joe. Go away to- 
gether, you'd sleep without coughing. Sleep, that's all. 
And God will be kinder than men. 

Joe. [Groaning.] Don't, Mary — don't ! 

Mary. Joe, I can't stand it any longer — I can't. Not 
only myself — but Minnie — Joe, it's too much for me ! 
I can't stand Minnie crying, and asking me for her break- 
fast, as she will in the morning. Joe, dear Joe, let there 
be no morning ! 

Joe. [Completely overcome.] Oh, Mary, Mary ! 

Mary. It's not your fault, dear — you've done what 
you could. Not your fault they won't let you work — 
you've tried hard enough. And no woman ever had a 
better husband than you've been to me. I love you, dear 
Joe. And let's do it — let's make an end. And take Min- 
nie with us. 

Joe. [Springing up.] Mary, I'll steal something to- 
morrow. 

Mary. And they'd send you to prison. Besides, then 
God would be angry. Now we can go to Him and need not 
be ashamed. Let us,'dear Joe — oh, do let us ! I'm so tired ! 

Joe. No. 

Mary. [Sorrowfully.] You won't ^ 

Joe. [Doggedly.] No. We'll go to the workhouse. 

Mary. You've seen them in there, haven't you f 

Joe. Yes. 

Mary. You've seen them standing at the window, 
staring at the world .'' And they'd take you away from me. 

Joe. That's better than 

Mary. [Firmly.] 1 won't do it, Joe. I've been a good 



ILLUSTRATIONS 291 

wife to you — Fve been a good mother : and I love you, 
though I'm ragged and have pawned all my clothes ; and 
I'll strangle myself rather than go to the workhouse and 
be shut away from you. 

Joe. [With a loud cry\ No ! I'll make them give me 
something; and if I have to kill, it shan't be my wife and 
child ! To-morrow I'll come home with food and money — 

to-morrow 

[There is a sudden wail from the child; Joe stops 
and stares at her ; Mary goes quickly to the mat- 
tress and soothes the little girl. 
Mary. Hush, dear, hush — no, it's not morning yet, 
not time for breakfast. Go to sleep again, dear. Yes, 
daddy's come back, and things are going to be all right now 
— No, dear, you can't be hungry, really — remember those 
beautiful cakes. Go to sleep, Minnie, dear. You're cold } 
[She takes off her ragged shawl and wraps it round the child.] 

There, dear, you won't be cold now. Go to sleep, Minnie 

[The child's wail dies away, as Mary soothes her 
back to sleep. 
Joe. [Staggering forward with a sudden cry.\ God, O 
God, give us bread ! 

THE curtain slowly FALLS 



THE BRACELET 

A Play in One Act 

The Persons of the Play 

Harvey Western 

His Honour Judge Banket 

Martin 

William 

Mrs. Western 

Mrs. Banket 

Miss Farren 

Smithers 

Time — The present 

The dining-room in an upper middle-class house near the 
Park. It is furnished in the conventional modern style, 
soberly and without imagination. The room is on the ground 
floor, facing the street; the door is to the right, and leads 
into the hall. To the left of this door is a sideboard, glit- 
tering with silver. Three tall windows, at the back, heavily 
curtained; between them hang two or three family por- 
traits. The table, on which there is the usual debris of a 
meal that is over — coffee-cups, liqueur-glasses, etc. — 
has been laid for four persons, and their four chairs are 
still around it. The fireplace, with its rather crude and 
ambitious mantelpiece, is in the centre of the left wall; 
and uncomfortable-looking heavy armchairs are on each 
side of it. On the mantelpiece are a marble clock and a 
few bits of china. In the angle formed at the left side is a 

292 



ILLUSTRATIONS 293 

small Queen Anne writing-tahle, open. To the right of 
the room is a large sofa. The floor is heavily carpeted, 
and there are many rugs scattered about. 

When the curtain risesy the room is in darkness. 
William, the footman, enters hurriedly and switches on the 
electric light. He rushes to the table, looks eagerly around, 
shifting cups and glasses, napkins, etc., then goes on his 
hands and knees and searches on the carpet. After a mo- 
ment, Smithers, the lady^s-maid, follows him. 

Smithers. [Eagerly.] Can't you find it ? 

William. [Sulkily.] No. Not yet. Give me time. 

Smithers. [Feeling along the table-cloth.] Under one of 
those rugs, perhaps. 

William. Well, Vm looking. [Motor-horn sounds sharply, 
off.] All right, all right ! 

Smithers. [With a jerk of the head.] Missis is telling 
him to do it. 

William. [On all fours, crawling about.] Very like her 
voice, too, when she's angry. Drat the thing ! Where can 
it be ? 

[He peers into the coal-scuttle. 

Smithers. No good looking in there, stupid. 

William. They always say it's the unlikeliest places 

[Martin, the butler, comes in. 

Martin. Come, come, haven't you found it ? 

William. No, Mr. Martin. It ain't here. 

Martin. [Bustling about.] Must be, must be. She 



says 

William. I can't help what she says. It ain't. 
Martin. [Looking under the sofa.] Just you hustle, 
young man, and don't give me any back-answers. 

[Having completed his examination of the sofa, he 
moves to the sideboard, and fusses round that. 



294 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Smithers. [Methodically shaking out each napkin.] I 
tell you she's cross. 

Martin. [Hard at work, searching.] Doesn't mind dis- 
turbing us, in the midst of our supper ! 

William. [Who, all the time, has been on all fours search- 
ing.] We're dirt, that's what we are — dirt. 

Martin. [Reprovingly.] William, I've told you before 

William. Very sorry, Mr. Martin, but this is the first 
time I've accepted an engagement at a stockbroker's. [He 
has been crawling round the curtains at the back, shaking them; 
pulling hard at one of them he dislodges the lower part.] Lor ! 
Now I've done it ! 

Smithers. Clumsy ! 

Martin. [Severely.] That comes of too much talk. 
Never mind the curtain — go on looking. 

[William drops on to his hands and knees again; 
Harvey Western comes into the room, per- 
turbed and restless. He is a well-preserved man 
of fifty. 

Harvey. I say — not found it t 

Martin. Not yet, sir. 

Harvey. Nuisance. Must be here, you know. 

Martin. Is it a very valuable one, sir ? 

Harvey. [Who has gone to the table, and is turning things 
over.] No, no, not particularly — but that's not the point. 

[He looks under the table. 

Martin. [Still seeking.] When did madam find that 
she'd lost it, sir } 

Harvey. Oh, about five minutes after we'd started. 
And we've turned over everything in the car. It's certainly 
not there. [He fusses around the table. 

Martin. Is madam quite sure she was wearing it, sir t 

Smithers. [Fretfully.] Yes, yes, of course she was wear- 
ing it. I put it on her myself. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 295 

Martin. Where did madam put her cloak on, sir ? 
Smithers. In here. I brought it in. 

Martin. You didn't notice whether 

Smithers. No. Don't you think if we moved all the 

rugs 

[She moves across the room and joins William, who 
is still grovelling on the floor, and goes on her 
knees by his side. 
Harvey. It must be here somewhere. 

[They are all searching furiously — William hy the 
windows, peering into the spaces between the 
wall and the carpets, Martin at the sideboard, 
Smithers gathering the rugs together, all on their 
hands and knees, while Harvey, bent double, 
is looking under the table. Mrs. Western 
comes in stonily, followed by the Judge and 
Mrs. Banket. Mrs. Western is a hand- 
some woman of forty-five, with a rather stern, 
cold face; the Judge, a somewhat corpulent, 
genial man of fifty-five ; and his wife, an 
amiable nullity, seven or eight years younger. 
They are all in evening-dress, the ladies in opera- 
cloaks. 
Mrs. Western. [Pausing on the threshold^ Well ! 
Harvey. [Rising and dusting himself \ No trace of it. 
Mrs. Western. [Looking around.] A nice mess you've 
made of the room ! 

Martin. You told us to look, Madam. 
Judge. [Going to the fire and standing with his back to it.] 
I'm afraid we'll be shockingly late, Alice. 

Mrs. Western. [Firmly.] I don't go without my 
bracelet. 

[She goes to the table, and proceeds to shift the cups and 
glasses. 



296 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mrs. Banket. [Moving to the other side of the table ^ and 
doing the same.] Quite right, dear — I wouldn't. 

[They all search, except the Judge, who shrugs his 
shoulders placidly, then takes a cigarette from his 
case, and lights it. The three servants still are 
grovelling on the floor. 

Mrs. Western. I know I had it while I was drinking 
my coffee 

Judge. My experience is, one should never look for things. 
They find themselves. 

Mrs. Western. [Shortly?^ Nonsense. 

Judge. A fact. Or at least one should pretend to be 
looking for something else. My glasses now. When I 
lose them I declare loudly I can't find my cigar-case. That 
disheartens the glasses — they return at once. 

Mrs. Banket. [Reproachfully.] Don't be so irritating, 
Tom! 

Judge. That's all very well, but how about me t I was 
asked here to dine. I've dined — I'm not complaining 
about the dinner. But now the curtain's up — and here 
am I watching half-a-dozen people looking very hard for a 
thing that isn't there. 

Mrs. Banket. Tom, Tom, it's those laughs you get in 
Court that make you so fond of talking. Don't you see how 
you're vexing your sister ? 

Mrs. Western. Oh, I'm used to Tom. Harvey, I 
think you might be looking. 

Harvey. My dear, I've been turning round and round 
in this corner like a bird in a cage. 

Martin. [Who all this time, like the other servants, has 
been crawling around the different articles of furniture in the 
room, suddenly rises to his feet and addresses his mistress firmly 
but respectfully.] It's not here, madam. 

[The other servants also rise; and stand, each in their 
corner. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 297 

Judge. That, I imagine, is perfectly clear ; and I con- 
gratulate the witness on the manner in which he has given his 
evidence. [He throws his cigarette into the fire and steps for- 
ward.] Now, my dear Alice 

Mrs. Western. [Sitting doggedly in the chair in front of 
the table and proceeding to pull off her gloves.] I don't go with- 
out my bracelet. 

Judge. Heaven forbid that I should speak slightingly of a 
gift of Harvey's — but really it isn't of such priceless value. 

Mrs. Western. That has nothing to do with it. 

Mrs. Banket. Of course not. Oh, these men ! 

Harvey. [Stepping forward.] Tom's right. Let's go. 
Look here, I'll get you another. 

Mrs. Western. [Drily.] Thanks — I want that one. 
— Smithers, and you, William, just look again in the hall. 

Smithers. Yes, m'm. 

Mrs. Western. And then help the chauffeur — turn 
out everything in the car. 

Smithers. Yes, m'm. 

Mrs. Western. Bring the rugs into the house, and 
shake them. 

Smithers. Yes, m'm. [She and William go. 

Judge. [Going hack to the fire.] Sumptuary laws — 
that's what we want. If women didn't wear bracelets, 
they couldn't lose them. 

Mrs. Western. Martin, William is honest, isn't he t 

Harvey. [Protesting.] Oh, hang it, Alice ! 

Martin. Quite, madam — excellent character — a little 
flighty, but a most respectable young man. 

Mrs. Western. I've seen him reading a sporting paper. 

Judge. A weakness, my dear Alice, common to the 
best of us. I do it myself sometimes, but I'm willing to be 
searched. 

Mrs. Banket. O Tom, do be quiet ! 



298 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mrs. Western. [To the Judge.] You're very un- 
sympathetic. [Turning to Martin again.] None of the 
other servants came in after we left ? 

Martin. No, madam. 

Mrs. Western. You're sure .? 

Martin. Quite sure, madam. They were all downstairs, 
having their supper. 

Mrs. Western. Most mysterious ! Incomprehensible I 

Judge. [Looking at his watch.] Past nine ! We shall 
plunge into the play — like body-snatchers, looking for the 
corpse of the plot — and we shall never know what it was 
that the heroine did. 

Mrs. Western. [Ignoring him, to Martin.] Smithers 
I'll answer for. 

Martin. Oh yes, madam. If I might make a sugges- 
tion 

Mrs. Western. Well } 

Martin. It couldn't have fallen anywhere into your 
dress, madam .? 

Mrs. Western. Nonsense, how could it t [She gets up 
and shakes herself.] Absurd. [She sits again. 

Martin. Into your cloak .^ 

Mrs. Western. Silk! No. That'll do, Martin. You 
might help the others outside. [Martin goes. 

Judge. [With a step forward.] Now, admirable sister 

Mrs. Western. Didn't it strike you that Martin's 
manner was rather strange ? 

Harvey. [Fretfully.] Really you must not suspect the 
servants ! 

Mrs. Western. [Turning to him.] Must not — must! 
That's scarcely the way to speak to me, Harvey. 

Harvey. [Deprecatingly.] My dear 

Mrs. Western. And I wasn't suspecting — I was 
merely asking a question of my brother. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 299 

Judge. Come, Alice, let's go. 

Mrs. Western. [Shaking her head.] You three go. 
You'll excuse me. 

Judge. [Cheerfully.] If you insist 

Mrs. Banket. [Coming forward.] No, no. Do come, 
Alice ! 

Mrs. Western. I can't — I'm so puzzled. [With a 
sudden idea.] Oh ! 

Harvey. [Who is behind her to the left, between her and 
the Judge.] What t Have you found' it "t 

Mrs. Western. No, no — of course not. But ring, 
please, will you .? 

Harvey. Why ? 

Mrs. Western. I want you to ring. [He presses the 
bell by the fireplace.] I just remember Miss Farren came in 
while we were having coffee. 

Harvey. [Indignantly.] Alice ! 

Mrs. Western. I asked her to write a card to Har- 
rod's — she'll have written it in here. 

Harvey. [Angrily.] I say — really ! 

Mrs. Western. [Coldly.] No need to snub me again 
— before our guests ! I need scarcely say I am not sus- 
pecting Miss Farren — but in justice to her 

Mrs. Banket. But, Alice, she'll have gone out — you 
told her she might 

Mrs. Western. Only to her sister's close by — and 
she may not have gone yet. Why don't they answer the 
bell t Ring again, Harvey. 

Judge. The poor things are still searching. 

Harvey. [Firmly.] Alice, I protest, I do indeed 

Mrs. Western. Don't be so foolishly sentimental — 
it's ridiculous at your age. The young woman is in my 
employ, as governess to my children. [Martin comes in.] 
Has Miss Farren gone out yet ? 



300 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Martin. No, madam. I believe she's in her room, 
dressing. 

Mrs. Western. Ask her to come. 

Martin. Yes, madam. [He goes. 

Judge. [Shaking his head.] No sense of proportion, 
that's the truth — they've no sense of proportion. 
Mrs. Banket. Tom ! 

Judge. A fact, my dear — but you can't help it. You've 
every quality in the world but just that — you will always 
look through the wrong end of the telescope. 

Mrs. Banket. Really, Tom, this isn't the moment for 
your nonsense — and if you only knew how stupid you are 
when you try to be funny ! 

Harvey. [Going nervously to Mrs. Western.] I say, 

I really do think 

Mrs. Western. [Roughly.] I don't care what you think. 
Leave me alone ! 

[There is silence. The Judge, sitting by the fire, 
whistles loudly " Waltz me around again, Willie!" 
Harvey has gone moodily across the room and 
stands hy the sideboard. Mrs. Banket is 
sitting behind the table. After a moment ike 
door opens, and Miss Farren comes in, with 
hat and cloak on, and goes straight to Mrs. 
Western. She is an extremely pretty girl of 
twenty. 
Miss Farren. You want me, Mrs. Western ? 
Mrs. Western. Oh, Miss Farren, I've lost my bracelet. 
Miss Farren. Really ! I'm so sorry ! Where .^ 
Mrs. Western. I don't know. You didn't see it, of 
course, after we'd gone t 

Miss Farren. [Shaking her head.] No — and no one 
came in. I was writing the letter to Harrod's. 
Mrs. Western. No one at all ? 



ILLUSTRATIONS 3OI 

Miss Farren. No — Pm sure of that. And Pd hardly- 
got to my room when I heard the car come back. 
Mrs. Western. Well, thank you, Miss Farren. 
Miss Farren. It's very annoying. You're sure it's 
not in the car .? 

Judge. My dear Miss Farren, it's not in the car, it's 
not anywhere, and I'm beginning to believe it never was 
at all. Come, Alice, let's go. We shan't see much of the 
play, but we can at least help the British drama by buying 
two programmes. 

Miss Farren. [JVith a light laugh — then turning to Mrs. 
Western again.] Do you want me any more, Mrs. Western f 
Mrs. Western. No, thanks. [Miss Farren turns to 
go — Mrs. Western, who has suddenly cast an eager glance 
at her, as though attracted by something, calls her back.] Oh 
Miss Farren ! 

Miss Farren. [Turning.] Yes .^ 

Mrs. Western. I wonder whether you'd be so good as 
to shift this aigrette of mine — it's hurting me. 
Miss Farren. Certainly. 

[She comes back to Mrs. Western, and stands by 
her side ; as she raises her arm Mrs. Western 
jumps up and seizes it by the wrist. 
Mrs. Western. My bracelet ! 

[Keeping a tight hold of Miss Farren's wrist, she 

holds it at arm's length. There is a general cry of 

amazement — the Judge and his wife start to 

their feet — Harvey rushes eagerly towards her. 

Judge. Alice ! 

Mrs. Banket. Oh ! 

Harvey. No, no 

[These three exclamations are simultaneous. 
Mrs. Western. There it is ! She took it! 
Judge. Are you sure ? 



302 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 
Harvey. [Breathless and urgent.] Alice 



Miss Farren. [Recovering from her shock and bewilder- 
ment.] Mrs. Western, it isn't 

Mrs. Western. [Sternly, still holding the girl hy the 
wrist.] You dare to pretend 

Harvey. [Who is now at the back of his wife^s chair, look- 
ing closely at the bracelet.] Let me look, let me look. . . . 
I say, Alice, you're wrong. It's not yours at all. The 
setting's different. 

Mrs. Western. [Angrily.] What do you mean, differ- 
ent .^ You think I don't know my own bracelet ? Are you 
mad .^ I say it's mine — and it is ! 

Judge. [Stepping forward.] Alice, be careful — — 

Mrs. Western. Careful ! You're as bad as he ! Of 
course the thing's mine — I've been wearing it for weeks — 
and^ you think I can make a mistake ? She found it, and 
took it. 

Miss Farren. [Very distressed.] No, no, Mrs. W^estern, 
really ! It isn't yours ! I assure you ! 

Harvey. Alice, I declare to you 

Mrs. Western. [Roughly.] Be quiet and go away. 
This is no business of yours. 

Harvey. [Eagerly.] But it is ! It was I who bought 
the wretched thing — well, I am prepared to swear that 
this isn't the one 1 

Mrs. Western. [A little shaken, looking at it again.] 
You're prepared to. . . . [She lifts her head.] How can you 
talk such utter nonsense .? There is not the least doubt — 
not the least! 

Judge. [Stopping Harvey, who is about to protest violently.] 
Alice, mind what you're saying. You'll get yourself into 
trouble. If Harvey says 

Mrs. Banket. [Contemptuously.] He's saying it to 
shield her, that's all. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 303 

Harvey. [Indignantly.] I'm not. It's not true. But 
you mustn't bring such an accusation. It's monstrous. 
And I won't allow 

Mrs. Western. [Drawing herself up.] You — won't — 
allow ! The girl takes my bracelet — and you won't 
allow ! 

Miss Farren. [Trying to free herself.] Mrs. Western, 
I haven't, I haven't ! 

Judge. [Impressively.] Alice, will you listen to me .^ 

Mrs. Western. No, I won't! This doesn't concern 
you, or any one, but me and this girl ! Look at her — she 
knows ! 

Miss Farren. Mrs. Western, you're hurting my arm. . . . 

Mrs. Western. Come now — confess ! I won't be hard 

on you if you confess 

[She wrenches off the bracelet, and releases the girl, 
who staggers back, nursing her wrist. 

Harvey. [Almost beside himself, stamping his foot.] 
Alice, Alice, will you hear 

Miss Farren. Oh, you have hurt me ! And you've no 
right — to say such things. . . . 

Harvey. No, you haven't, you haven't ! 

Mrs. Western. Besides, a bracelet like that ! [She 
holds it up. To Miss Farren.] You won't confess 1 Very 
well, then. I'll send for a policeman. 

Harvey. [Doggedly.] The bracelet is hers. 

Mrs. Western. [Jeeringly.] Turquoise and emeralds ! 
Hers ! A coincidence, perhaps. Very likely. I'll give 
her in charge at once. 

Harvey. The bracelet is hers, I tell you. 

Mrs. Western. [Turning furiously on him.] You dare 
to say that.^ 

Harvey. [Steadily.] Yes. Because I myself — gave it 
to her. 



304 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

[There is a moment! s almost stupefied silence; Har- 
vey and Alice are face to face. Miss Farren 
to the left of her, Mrs. Banket is still at the back,- 
the Judge by the fire. Mrs. Western breaks 
the silence. 

Mrs. Western. [Sternly.] You — gave — it — her ? 

Harvey. [Steadily.] Yes. 

Mrs. Western. You ask me to believe that you gave 
a bracelet to — this person — my children's governess ? 

Harvey. I did. 

Mrs. Western. An exact copy of the one you gave me 1 

Harvey. I've told you — it's not an exact copy — there's 
a difference in the setting. 

Mrs. Banket. Nonsense, nonsense, it can't be — he's 
just saying this 

Judge. Fanny, don't interfere. 

Harvey. I'm saying what's true. 

Mrs. Western. I refuse to believe it. It's incredible. 
You've not sunk so low as that. It's a lie. 

Harvey. [Indignantly.] Alice ! 

Mrs. Western. Yes, a lie. A trumped-up story. The 
girl has taken it 

Miss Farren. I have not ! 

Mrs. Western. You can tell that to the magistrate — 
[She turns to Harvey] and you too, if you like. 

[She moves to the bell. 

Judge. [Putting out a hand to stop her.] Alice 

Mrs. Western. Leave me alone, Tom. I know what 
I'm doing. I'll send for a policeman. 

Harvey. [Imploringly.] Alice, Alice 

Mrs. Western. [Pausing, with her hand on the bell.] 
I'll let the girl off, if you'll tell me the truth. 

Harvey. I have told you the truth. 

Mrs. Western. You persist in this silly falsehood? 



ILLUSTRATIONS 305 

Harvey. It isn't — I tell you it isn't ! 
Mrs. Western. Very well, then. 

[She presses the hell. At that moment the door hursts 
open, and Martin comes in triumphantly, with 
the hracelet on a salver. Smithers and William 
are hehind him, hut do not pass heyond the 
threshold. 

Martin. [Eagerly.] Ma'am, ma'am, we've found the 

[Mrs. Western ^^j- turned towards him, still holding 
the other hracelet in her hand. Martin catches 
sight of it, and stops dead short, staring he- 
wilderedly at it. 
Mrs. Western. [Calmly.] Where did you find it? 

[She takes the hracelet off the salver and lays it on the 
table. 
Martin. [With a great effort.] It had fallen into the 
pocket of the car — there was a hole in the pocket — it 
had worked its way right down into the body. 
Mrs. Western. Very well. Thank you. 
[Martin goes; the other servants have already slunk off. 
There is a momenfs silence. Mrs. Western 
suddenly flings the hracelet she has in her hand in 
Miss Farren's direction. 
Mrs. Western. [Contemptuously.] Here. I return you 
your property. And now pack up your things and leave the 
house. 

Harvey. [Who has stepped forward and picked up the hrace^ 
let, standing hetween Mrs. Western and Miss Farren.] No. 
Mrs. Western. [Staring at him.] What ? 
Harvey. [Violently.] I say. No! 

Mrs. Western. I have told the girl to leave my house. 
Harvey. My house — mine ! And she shall stay in it ! 
Or, at least, when she goes, it shall be without the slightest 
stain or suspicion 

X 



306 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mrs. Western. [Scornfully.] I am not accusing her of 
theft. 

Harvey. But you are insinuating — I declare solemnly 
before you all 

Judge. [Interposing.] Harvey, one moment. ... I am 
sure that Miss Farren would rather go to her room. . . . 

Miss Farren. Yes. 

Harvey. By all means. Here, take your bracelet. 
[He gives it to her.] But you don't leave this house — you 
understand that ? / am master here. 

[Miss Farren goes quietly. 

Judge. Now just listen to me, both of you. Be calm — 
all this excitement won't help. Harvey, you too. You 
and Alice will have your explanation 



Mrs. Western. If the girl doesn't go to-night 

Harvey. I tell you again she shall not! And there's 
no need. I was a fool to give her that bracelet — she didn't 
want to take it 

Mrs. Banket. Why did you } 

Harvey. I had given Alice one on her birthday. 

Mrs. Western. Well ^ 

Harvey. And so I got her one. 

Mrs. Western. Why.? 

Harvey. Because [He stops, very embarrassed.] 

Mrs. Western. Well ? 

Harvey. Because — oh, because — well, she admired 
it — and she liked pretty things too. ... 

Mrs. Western. I don't think you need say anything more. 

Mrs. Banket. No. He needn't. It's clear enough ! 

Harvey. [Eagerly.] Look here, on my honour — I am 
fond of her, of course, in a way — but I'm old enough to 
be her father — and I swear to you all — I've seen her about, 
of course, a good deal — and I gave her that thing — but 
beyond that, nothing, nothing ! 



ILLUSTRATIONS 307 

Mrs. Western. [Siuing, and with a shrug of the shoulder.] 
A ridiculous fairy tale ! 

Judge. My dear Alice, take my advice, and believe your 
husband. 

Mrs. Western. You too ! 

Mrs. Banket. All alike, when there's a pretty face ! 

Judge. Let her find another situation, by all means. . . . 
But to turn a girl out, at a moment's notice ! You couldn't. 

Mrs. Western. [Turning to the Judge.] You are really 
suggesting that I should sleep under the same roof with 

Judge. [Almost sternly.] You are condemning, without 
the slightest evidence. And condemning, remember, an 
utterly defenceless creature. This girl has a claim on you : 
were your suspicions justified, she would still have a claim. 

Mrs. Western. Indeed ! 

Mrs. Banket. The nonsense he talks ! It's really too 
silly ! 

Judge. You are extraordinary, you women ! You exact 
such rigid morality from the governess and the housemaid ! 
You're full of excuses when it's one of yourselves ! 

Mrs. Banket. [Indignantly.] Tom ! 

Judge. Well, that's true — we all know it ! And here 

— I believe every word Harvey has said. 

Mrs. Western. [Scarcely believing her ears.] You do ! 

Judge. Because he is a man of honour, and men of 
honour have their code. Their children's governess ... is 
safe. You will do well to believe it, too. Now, Fanny, we'll 
go. Be sensible, Alice — I tell you again, Harvey's right; 
the girl must not be — summarily dismissed : it would be 
an act of cruel injustice. Good-bye. [He offers to kiss her 

— she turns away.] As you like. Good-bye, Harvey, old 
man. 

Harvey. Good-bye, Tom. [They shake hands.] And 
thank you. 



308 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mrs. Banket. [Kissing Mrs. Western.] My poor, 
dear Alice ! 

Mrs. Western. Good-bye, Fanny. I'm sorry that 
our party to-night 

Mrs. Banket. Oh, that doesn't matter! Poor thing! 
I promise you that Tom shall have a good talking to ! 

[She is too angry with Harvey to say good-bye to him : 
she and the Judge go. The moment the door 
closes, Harvey begins, feverishly and pas- 
sionately. 

Harvey. Now just listen. I'm going to speak to you — 
I'm going to say things — things that have been in my 
heart, in my life, for years. I'm not going to spare you. 
I'm going to tell you the truth, and the truth, and the 
truth ! 

Mrs. Western. [Calmly, looking ironically at him.] If 
it's the same kind of truth you've been giving us to-night 

Harvey. We've been married ten years. Oh, I know, 
we were neither of us very young. But anyhow the last five 
have been nothing but misery for me. Misery — do you 
hear that ? You sitting there, calm and collected — not 
caring one damn for me 

Mrs. Western. [Quietly.] That's not true. 

Harvey. It is, and you know it. The mother of my 
children ! Satisfied with that. Never a word of kindness, 
or sympathy. And as for — affection ! 

Mrs. Western. We're not sweethearts — we're middle- 
aged people. 

Harvey. Well, I need something more. And, look here, 
I'll tell you. This girl has made life worth living. That's 
all. I'd come home at night dog-tired, all day in the City — 
sick of it. Stock Exchange, office, and the mud and the grime 
and the worry — there were you, with a nod, ah, Harvey, 
good evening — and you'd scarcely look up from your Com- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 309 

mittee Report or your Blue-book, or damned pamphlet or 
other 

Mrs. Western. [Contemptuously.] You are one of the 
men who want their wife to be a mere sort of doll. 

Harvey. [More and more vehemently.] I want my wife 
to care for me ! I want her to smile when I come in, and be 
glad — I want her to love me ! You don't ! By the Lord, 
I've sneaked upstairs, gone in and had a peep at the chil- 
dren — well, they'd be asleep. I tell you I've been hungry, 
hungry, for a word, for a look ! And there, in the school- 
room, was this girl. I've played it low down, I know — 
she's fond of me. But I couldn't help it — I was lonely 
— that's what it was. I've gone up there night after night. 
You didn't know where I was — and you didn't care. In 
my study, you thought — the cold, chilly box that you call 
my study — glad to have me out of the way. Well, there 
I was, with this girl. It was something to look forward to, 
in the cab, coming home. It was something to catch hold 
of, when things went wrong, in that dreary grind of money- 
making. Her eyes lit up when they saw me. She'd ask me 
about things — if I coughed, she'd fuss me — she had pretty 
ways, and was pleased, oh, pleased beyond words, if I 
brought her home something 

Mrs. Western. So this isn't the first time ! 

Harvey. [With a snarl.] No, of course not ! She ad- 
mired that bracelet of yours — by Jove, I said to myself, 
I'll get her one like it ! Whatever I brought home to you 
you'd scarcely say thank you — and usually it went into 
the drawer — I'd such shocking bad taste ! She'd beam ! 
Well, as ill-luck would have it, you took a fancy to this one. 
I told her she mustn't wear hers 

Mrs. Western. [Calmly and cuttingly.] Conspiring be- 
hind my back. 

Harvey. [Raging.] Oh, if you knew what has gone on 



3IO FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

behind your back ! Not when I was with her — when I 
was alone ! The things I've said about you — to myself ! 
When I thought of this miserable life that had to be dragged 
on here, thought of your superior smile, your damnable 
cruelty 

Mrs. Western. [Genuinely surprised.] Cruelty! Why.? 

Harvey. What else .? I'd go up to you timidly — bah, 
why talk of it ? To you I've been the machine that made 
money — money to pay for the house, and the car, and the 
dressmakers' bills — a machine that had to be fed — and 
when you'd done that, you'd done all. Well, there was 
this girl 

Mrs. Western. You had your children. 

Harvey. A boy of seven and a girl of five — in bed when 
I came home — and your children much more than mine — 
I'm a stranger to them ! And anyhow, I wanted something 
more — something human, alive — that only a woman can 
give. And she gave it. Nothing between us, I swear — 
but just that. As Tom says, I've not been such a cur — 
and you ought to know me well enough, after all these 
years ! . . . But there is the truth — she's fond of me : 
she is, it's a fact. And I needed that fondness — it has kept 
me going. And now — do you think I'll let her be thrust 
out into the street .? 

[As he says these last words he drops into a chair, 
facing her, and looks fiercely and doggedly at her. 

Mrs. Western. [Calmly.] Stop now, and listen to 
me. I've let you rattle on. Will you hear me for one 
moment 1 

Harvey. Go on. 

Mrs. Western. All those things you've said about me — 
[With a shrug.] Well, what's the use 1 I suppose we're 
like most married people when they come to our age. I've 
interests of my own, that don't appeal to you 



ILLUSTRATIONS 3 II 

Harvey. Blue-books and Committees ! 

Mrs. Western. I do useful work — oh yes, you may 
sneer — you always have sneered ! If a woman tries to do 
something sensible with her life, instead of cuddling and 
kissing you all day, she's cold and cruel. We've drifted 
apart — well, your fault as much as mine. More, perhaps 
— but it's no good going into that — no good making re- 
proaches. That's how things are — we must make the best 
of them. Wait, let me finish. About this girl. Granted 
that what you say is true — and I'm inclined to believe 
it 

Harvey. [Genuinely grateful.] At least thank you for 
that ! 

Mrs. Western. Or at any rate it's better policy to be- 
lieve it, for every one's sake ■ 

Harvey. [Bitterly.] That's right — that's more like 
you ! 

Mrs. Western. We gain nothing by abusing each other. 
And I didn't interrupt you. Let's look facts in the face. 
Here we are, we two — tied. 

Harvey. [With a groan.] Yes. 

Mrs. Western. With our two children. If it weren't 
for them. . . . Well, we've got to remain together. Now 
there's this girl. It's quite evident, after what you've said, 
that she can't stop here 

Harvey. [Jumping to his feet.] She shall ! 

Mrs. Western. [Fretfully.] Oh, do be a man, and drop 
this mawkish sentiment ! You say she's fond of you — 
you've made her fond of you. Was this a very pretty 
thing — for a man of your age to do f 

Harvey. [Sullenly y as he drops hack into his chair.] 
Never mind my age. 

Mrs. Western. Very well then — for a married man ? 

Harvey. An unhappy man. 



312 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

Mrs. Western. Even granting that — though If you're 
unhappy It's your own fault — IVe always been urging 
you to go on the County Council — What's to become of the 
girl, If she stops here ? 

Harvey. [Desperately.] I don't know — but I can't let 
her go — I tell you I can't ! 

Mrs. Western. [Scarcely able to conceal her disgust.] Oh, 
if you knew how painful it Is to hear you whining like this ! 
It's pitiable, really ! In the girl's own interest — how can 
she stop } 

Harvey. She must. I can't let her be turned out. 
It would break her heart. 

Mrs. Western. [Turning right round, and staring at him.] 
What? 

Harvey. [Doggedly.] Yes, it would. She's very fond of 
me, that's the truth. I know that I've been to blame — 
but It's too late for that now. She's romantic, of course — 
what you'd call sentimental. I dare say I've played on her 
feelings — she saw I was lonely. She has a side that you've 
never suspected — a tender, sensitive side — she has Ideals. 
. . . Well, do you realise what it would mean, with a girl 
like that t No one knows her as I do. I'm quite startled, 
sometimes, to find how fond she Is of me. Oh, have some 
sympathy ! It's difficult, I know — It's terribly difficult. 
But she loves me — that's the truth — and a young girl's 
love — why, she might throw herself into the river ! Oh 
yes, you smile — but she might ! What do you know of 
life, with your Blue-books ? Anyhow, I daren't risk it. 
By-and-by — there's no hurry. Is there .^ And I put It to 
you — be merciful ! You're not the ordinary woman — 
you have a brain — you're not conventional. Don't act 
like the others. Don't drive this girl out of the house. It 
would end in tragedy. Believe It ! 

Mrs. Western. You can't really expect me to keep a 



ILLUSTRATIONS 313 

girl here, as governess to my children, who, as you say, is 
in love with you. 

Harvey. [Pleading.] I expect you — Fm asking you 
— to help her — and me. 

Mrs. Western. [Shaking her head.] That's too much. 
We won't turn her out to-night — I'll give her a reference, 
and all that 

Harvey. [Springing to his feet again.] Alice, I can't let 
her go 1 

Mrs. Western. [Conciliatorily.] Ask Tom, ask any 
one 

Harvey. [More and more passionately.] I tell you, I 
can't let her go ! 

Mrs. Western. Be sensible, Harvey — you must rea- 
lise yourself there's no alternative 

Harvey. [With a violent and uncontrollable outburst.] 
I vow and declare to you — if she goes, I go too ! And the 
consequences will be on your head ! 

[Mrs. Western has also risen — they stand face 
to face^ looking at each other — and for a mo- 
ment there is silence. The door opens, and 
Miss Farren comes in, dressed as before. 
She walks straight to Mrs. Western. 

Miss Farren. Mrs. Western, my things are packed, 
and on the cab 

Harvey. [Wildly.] My poor child, you're not to go — 
I told you 1 

Miss Farren. [With a demure glance at him, stopping 
him as he is moving towards her.] Of course I must — I 
can't stay here — that's not possible. My sister will take 
me in for to-night. 

Mrs. Western. Miss Farren, my husband has explained 
to me — I withdraw all 

Miss Farren. [Carelessly.] Oh, that's all right — 



314 FACTS, THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION 

though thank you all the same. And it really doesn't 
matter much. I was going to give notice to-morrow any- 
way 

Harvey. [Starting violently.] What ! 

Miss Farren. Well, I put it off as long as I could, Mr. 
Western, because . . . But the fact is I'm going on the 
stage — musical comedy 

Harvey. [Breathless, staggering back.] You — are — 
going 

Miss Farren. I've accepted an engagement — oh, 
I'm only to be a show-girl at first — but they believe I'll 
do well. They've been wanting me some time. And my 
fiance has persuaded me. 

Harvey. [Collapsing utterly, dropping into the chair by 
the fire.] Your 

Miss Farren. [Gravely.] My fiance — yes. He's one 
of the comic men there. 

Mrs. Western. [Who has been watching them both with 
an unmoved face \ I'll write a cheque for your salary, Miss 
Farren. [She goes to the desk at back. 

Miss Farren. [Coquettishly, to Harvey.] I ought to 
have told you, I know, Mr. Western. But it was so dull 
here — and you've been most awfully good to me. I can 
never be sufficiently grateful. 

Harvey. [JVith difficulty, his face turned away.] Don't 
mention it. And I hope you'll be happy. 

Miss Farren. [Lightly.] Thank you. I mean to try! 
[Mrs. Western returns with a cheque which she 
hands to Miss Farren. 

Mrs. Western. Here, Miss Farren. 

Miss Farren. [Putting it into her bag.] Thank you so 
much. Good-bye. 

Mrs. Western. If you should ever need a reference, 
don't be afraid to 



ILLUSTRATIONS 315 

Miss Farren. Oh, thanks, no more governessing for 
me. Good-bye ! 

[She trips out, without another glance at Harvey, 

who sits huddled hy the fire. Mrs. Western 

moves slowly to the door. At the threshold she 

pauses, turns, and looks at Harvey. 

Mrs. Western. I'll take care that the next governess — 

shall be quite as pretty as this one, Harvey. 

[She opens the door and goes, Harvey doesnH stir. 

THE CURTAIN FALLS 



APPENDIX 
DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A PRECIS 

I. What a precis Is. 

A. A precis is a condensed essay, giving in logical se- 
quence the main thoughts or facts of the original author,^ 
freed from all nonessential matter. 

II. What a precis is not. 

A. The precis is not a paragraph outline of the original 
article. Each main heading of the printed essay will usually 
cover several paragraphs ; a paragraph outline ignores the 
distinction between the main headings and their minor sub- 
divisions, ignores the very distinction which gives the precis 
value. Also whole paragraphs may be introduced in the 
original article merely to win over a hostile reader or interest 
an apathetic one, and consequently should be omitted from 
the precis. 

B. Although the construction of an outline is a pre- 
paratory step, the final version of the precis is not to be 
written in any kind of outline form. 

C. The precis should contain no comment, criticism, or 
thought not found in the original. 

III. Steps in making a precis. 

A. The central thought of the whole essay should be 
summarized in a sentence. It is well to write that sen- 
tence at the head of the precis. 

* Or authors. A precis may represent the condensed information gathered 
from a body of correspondence, the letters of various writers. 

317 



3 1 8 APPENDIX 

B. The main divisions of the essay, that is, the main head- 
ings under which the author thought out the subject, should 
be distinguished from each other ; and the basic thought of 
each division summarized in a sentence. 
'; C. These sentences should be arranged as an outline, in 
the most coherent order, which will often, but not neces- 
sarily or always, be that of the printed essay. 

D. From the outline thus formed, a condensed essay 
should be written, in which each sentence of the outline is 
developed into a paragraph. The thought development un- 
derlying the paragraph should follow the thought develop- 
ment of the original essay. Examples and other illustrative 
material should be used only when indispensable, and, when 
used, should be reproduced from the original with the most 
rigid accuracy. 

E. All matter brought in for purposes of proof or illustra- 
tion must be placed under the topic which its author intended 
it to prove or illustrate. Its presence under any other head- 
ing condemns the precis as inaccurate and unintelligent. 

F. Space should be apportioned according to the impor- 
tance apparently attached to the different points by the 
original writer. This will usually, but not necessarily or 
always, mean that space will be apportioned as in the printed 
article. 

IV. The precis and the magazine article. 

A. If the order of topics and proportionate space allotted 
to topics are not the same in a magazine article and a precis 
based on it, that fact does not necessarily mean that either 
is bad. The precis is written for readers concerned only with 
the logical development of thought or the bare statement of 
facts. Magazine articles are written to interest and to amuse, 
as well as to instruct; they may require an informal order 
or indirect presentation to hold the reader's attention or 
lull his prejudice. 

Printed in the United States of America. 



'T^HE following pages contain advertisements of 
books by the same author or on kindred subjects. 



English Composition in Theory and Practice 

By Professors H. S. CANBY, F. E. PIERCE, T. G. WRIGHT 

Of Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, and 

President H. N. MacCRACKEN 

Of Vassar College 
New and Revised Edition, i2mo, 455 pages, $1.40 

A Manual of Good English 

By President H. N. MacCRACKEN and Miss H. E. SANDISON 

Of Vassar College 

i2mo, 324 pages 

Facts, Thought and Imagination : A Book on Writing 

By Professors H. S. CANBY, F. E. PIERCE, W. H. DURHAM 

Of Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University 

izmOj about j8o pages 

Three books which form a good combination for Freshman EngKsh 
Composition coiu-ses. Canby's English Composition has for sev- 
eral years been extensively used as a text for normal Freshman stu- 
dents, and a careful revision during this period of time has made 
it more than ordinarily satisfactory. MacCracken and Sandison's 
Manual of Good English will be found a valuable supplement to 
this text, for it is intended primarily as a review of authorized prac- 
tice in EngUsh Composition, and as a book of reference particularly 
for such students as are defective in the essentials of good Enghsh. 
Canby's Facts, Thought and Imagination is designed as a text 
for advanced Freshman students. It does not place the emphasis 
on rhetorical drill, but on the thing to be written and how to write it. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



English Composition 



By CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH 

Professor of English in Harvard University, and 

FRANK W. C. HERSEY 

Instructor in English in Harvard University 

Cloth, i2mo, ^yg pages, $1.40 

1. The book makes a point of treating that part of the process 
of writing which takes place before any words are put on paper; 
namely, the perception of good descriptive and narrative material, 
and the use of books and periodicals for expository and argumenta- 
tive material; weighing and estimating of one authority against 
another ; the use of libraries, catalogues, and indexes, and the making 
of notes on books and lectures. 

2. Throughout it treats English composition, not as a separate 
subject, but as a matter which runs through all subjects and which 
includes all the spoken and written business of the day. 

3. In description and argument, which are sometimes thought to 
succeed by mere vividness, it emphasizes structural principles. 

4. Instead of merely treating the principles of composition — unity, 
emphasis, and coherence — in the abstract, after briefly explaining 
them, it shows what modifications they undergo in the different 
kinds of composition. 

5. The exercises and original problems are an important feature 
of the book. 

CONTENTS 

Introduction. 

Part I. Gathering and weighing materials. 

Part II. Exposition, including Biography and Criticism; Argu- 
ment; Description; Narrative. 

Part III. Structure, including sentences, paragraphs, and whole 
compositions considered with respect to unity, emphasis, and co- 
herence. 

Part IV. Diction, including grammar, spelling, pronunciation, 
abbreviations, representation of numbers, choice of words, number 
of words. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



College Readings in English Prose 

By FRANKLIN W. SCOTT, 

Assistant Professor of English, and 

JACOB ZEITLIN 

Associate in English in the University of Illinois 

i2mo, 653 pages, $1.40 

"Six hundred pages crammed full of illustrative material in all 
forms of composition. Valuable as a reference book for models, 
most of which are new, selected from modem writers or speakers." 
— School Review, Chicago. 

"The specimens selected for this volume of prose by Professors 
Scott and ZeitUn, of the University of Illinois, represent a greater 
range in subject matter, in typical forms and in variations of style 
than other texts of this sort. The book is all meat, more than 650 
pages of it. The editors have taken account of the special interest 
of the engineering and agricultural student, and have provided 
material which will appeal particularly to his taste, without being 
so technical in treatment as to baffle the lay intelligence. Many of 
the selections are from contemporary writings. The book is divided 
in a large way into examples of exposition, argument, description, 
narrative, and letters. The appendix contains more than twenty- 
five students' themes which are classified under the same general 
heads." — Journal of Education, Boston. 

"Wider in range than most similar volumes." — English Journal. 

"The result is a volume which the general reader will find as en- 
tertaining and as instructive as the coUege student. The articles 
are arranged under the various heads of exposition, argument, de- 
scription, narrative, and letters." — San Francisco Chronicle. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



Modem Essays 



SELECTED AND EDITED BY 

JOHN MILTON BERDAN, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of English in Yale College 

JOHN RICHIE SCHULTZ, M.A. 

AND 

HEWETTE ELWELL JOYCE, B.A. 

Instructors in English in Yale College 

i2mo, 448 pages i $1.25 

A volume of thirty-three essays selected from contemporary 
authors, the great majority of whom are still alive and among 
the most able writers of the age. The essays were chosen 
because, in the opinion of the editors, each author succeeded 
in saying forcibly what he wished to say; the emphasis is on 
the form, not on the facts; on the method, not the content. 
A wide range, both in treatment and in subject matter, is to 
be found, and the various forms of exposition are thoroughly 
illustrated without being offensively labelled. Each essay offers 
a suggestive treatment for its particular subject and its partic- 
ular audience. In order to enable the student to perceive 
clearly just what is gained and what is lost in each case, brief 
notes are prefixed to each essay, suggesting the scope and limi- 
tations of its particular type. A general theoretical introduc- 
tion has been included in order to explain the point of view of 
the entire book. Among the authors may be mentioned Whist- 
ler, Lubbock, Bryce, Wu Tingfang, Lodge, Taft, Phelps, Rhodes, 
Chesterton, Bennett, Lang, Leacock, Sumner, Woodrow Wilson, 
Galsworthy. The book will be found adapted for use in courses 
on Exposition or Essay- Writing, following the general Fresh- 
man course, although it may also be used in a Freshman course 
when it is desired to devote considerable attention to Exposition. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



